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CrOFSRlGHT DEBOSm 



THE 
ART OF BEING ALIVE 

SUCCESS THROUGH THOUGHT 

BY 

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

MCMXI V 



6-*^ 



^"^'^^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HARPER & BROTHERS 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
PUBLISHED JULY, 1914 



f' / to 
JUL 1 1' 1914 

©CLA37C639 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. Art Thou Alive? i 

II. Being Alive 2 

III. The Science of Sensible Thinking . . 7 

IV. The Life Worth While 10 

V. Begin Now 22 

VI. Common-sense Leaven of the Law . . 25 

VII. Modern Marriage 30 

VIII. The Generous Years 43 

IX. To Young Men 49 

X. Morbiditis 57 

XI. Prenatal Influence 63 

XII. The Neglected Art of Good Parent- 

hood ♦69 

XIII. The Tower Room 78 

XIV. Love 83 

XV. Thought-nails 91 

XVI. A Mental Inventory 97 

XVII. The Small Tow^n 102 

XVIII. What IS "Charm"? . 106 

XIX. Keep Still 109 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

XX. *'The Dangerous Age** 112 

XXI. The Sense of Humor 117 

XXII. Science and the Aura 122 

XXIII. The Money Question 128 

XXIV. Sex 132 

XXV. The Power of Reconstruction . . 136 

XXVI. The Law of Justice 140 

XXVII. The Business of Life 145 

XXVIII. The Waste of Thought-force . . . 149 

XXIX. Health and Beauty 155 

XXX. Self-control 162 

XXXI. The Springs of Happiness .... 165 

XXXII. The Art of Becoming Popular . . 169 

XXXIII. Life's Gray Days 174 

XXXIV. The Revival of Dancing . . . . 181 

XXXV. Practical Mental Prescription . . 187 

XXXVI. The Need of the World .... 190 

XXXVII. The Life Hereafter 195 



THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 



THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 



I 

ART THOU ALIVE? 

Art thou alive? Nay, not too soon reply, 
Tho' hand and foot, and lip, and ear, and eye 
Respond, and do thy bidding; yet maybe 
Grim death has done his direst work with thee. 
Life, as God gives it, is a thing apart 
From active body and from beating heart. 
It is the vital spark, the unseen fire, 
That moves the mind to reason and aspire; 
It is the force that bids emotion roll. 
In mighty billows from the surging soul. 

It is the light that grows from hour to hour, 

And floods the brain with consciousness of power; 

It is the spirit dominating all. 

And reaching God with its imperious call, 

Until the shining glory of his face 

Illuminates each sorrowful, dark place; 

It is the truth that sets the bondsman free, 

Knowing he will be what he wills to be. 

With its unburied dead the earth is sad. 

Art thou alive? Proclaim it and be glad. 

Perchance the dead may hear thee and arise. 

Knowing they live, and HERE is Paradise. 



c/ 



II 

BEING ALIVE 

Cease wondering why you came — 
Stop looking for faults and flaws; 

Rise up to-day in your pride and say, 
**I am part of the First Great Cause!" 

IN every thousand people who are living on this 
earth, not more than one is alive. 

To be really alive means more than to be a 
moving, breathing, eating, drinking, and talking 
human creature. 

He who is actually alive finds the days too 
short for all the wonderful explorations which 
life offers in three realms to the reverent and 
aspiring adventurer. 

He finds life itself a continual adventure, an 
unfolding panorama, with opportunities for pleas- 
ure and achievement at every turn. 

He finds himself an object of interesting study, 
however dissatisfied he may be with the present 
results of that study, for he perceives that he is 
a crude chunk of Eternity, and that in himself 
lie all the powers and possibilities latent in the 



BEING ALIVE 3 

Universe. And that in himself lies the will to 
work out these possibilities. 

He who is fully alive enjoys the earth and all 
its pleasures. He loves the slap of the wind upon 
his cheek, the dash of the waves upon his breast, 
the motion of his limbs in the swift walk; the 
thrill of the good steed's body under his own; the 
ecstasy of rhythm in the dance; the vibrant swing 
of the oar. He loves labor, and the fatigue 
which follows; and in his harmoniously developed 
frame there is not one lazy or unused muscle. 

But being alive does not stop here. 

The man who is practising the art of being 
alive to its full extent has an alert, receptive 
brain and an awakened spirit. Without these 
he would simply be a splendid animal. With 
these he is the highest expression of the Creative 
Power visible to mortal vision. And with these 
he finds his opportunities for happiness, useful- 
ness, and pleasure in existence threefold. 

He knows the pleasures of the physical plane, 
for which his body is fashioned; he draws to him- 
self the pleasures of the mental plane, and he 
senses the pleasures of the spiritual plane, which 
lies near, and derives power therefrom. 

The man who is alive in all these ways must 
radiate light, cheer, sympathy, and helpfulness 
to all who come within his aura. Being alive to 
the vibrations from three realms, he knows all 
temptations; and from having made many mis- 
steps himself, in his road to unfoldment, he can 



4 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

sympathize, counsel, and help onward those who 
have not been able to keep step with him in his 
progress. 

The man who is really alive realizes that he 
must use his own position in the world, and his 
own environment, as the first field of action if 
he hopes to reach success in any venture. He 
must not wait for luck or a miracle to give him a 
change of location and surroundings better suited 
to his taste. Out of whatever destiny has be- 
stowed upon him he will make the conditions 
which he desires. 

And out of every earth day he will make a 
little bit of heaven. 

No difficulty can discourage, no obstacle dis- 
may, no trouble dishearten the man who has 
acquired the art of being alive. Difficulties are 
but dares of fate, obstacles but hurdles to try 
his skill, troubles but bitter tonics to give him 
strength; and he rises higher and looms greater 
after each encounter with adversity. 

The man who is wholly alive finds pleasure in 
the simplest things; and to him nothing is com- 
monplace, nothing is menial. And he is never 
bored, for nature and human nature and himself 
are ever interesting subjects of contemplation and 
study. And the future to him is a radiant vision, 
growing ever more and more wonderful. 

If you are alive you are in touch with every 
new movement; you are awake to the conscious- 
ness of the march of progress and the discoveries 



BEING ALIVE 5 

of science; and you are lending a listening ear to 
what the students of metaphysical thought have 
to say. 

If you are dull or indifferent or unbelieving 
when the great facts relative to this subject are 
mentioned in your presence, then you are no 
more alive to the vital truths of the day than is 
the child unborn, or the victim of the sleeping 
sickness, who lies for months in a state of lethargy, 
unable to think or reason, even though not dead. 
The marvels which exist all about you, the won- 
derful experiences which are related by thousands 
of intelligent human beings, who have given time 
and concentration to the exploration of the men- 
tal realm, have appealed to your mind and heart 
sufficiently to awaken your respectful interest, if 
you are really alive. 

If you are bored with life and work, if you think 
the years of early youth alone are happy years, 
if you believe sentiment and romance are evanes- 
cent feelings, if you find daily life commonplace, 
if you imagine you are too old or too busy to 
make something worth while out of your oppor- 
tunities, then you are not alive. 

If you believe sickness, poverty, and unhappi- 
ness cannot be changed to health, comfort, and 
peace by yourself, then you are indeed unborn; 
and if you think elasticity of body and mind, and 
a joyful outlook, and worthy achievements, and 
vital joy in life cannot accompany human beings 
along the way after the half-century mark has 



6 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

been passed, you are not alive. You merely exist. 
And you are losing your wonderful chance to 
utilize for the good of the world and for your own 
good, here and hereafter, these golden days by a 
knowledge and use of the Divine Will in yourself. 
Are you alive f 



Ill 

THE SCIENCE OF SENSIBLE THINKING 

However full the world, 

There is room for an earnest man. 

It had need of me, or I would not be — 
I am here to strength the plan. 

A FEW years ago the philosophy of **Mind 
Over Matter" was talked and believed only 
by advanced thinkers and dreamers, the spiritual- 
minded and the visionary. Practical, every-day 
people laughed at or ignored all phases of the new- 
version of a very old science. 

It is gratifying and surprising to find how the 
law is to-day being understood and employed in 
the world. 

Not long since a successful manager of two 
very large hotels was complimented upon the har- 
mony and happiness which pervaded his hotels. 
Employees and associates all seemed to regard 
the employer as a personal friend and work as 
a recreation. The proprietor was a handsome, 
florid man, of middle age, alert and active. A 
casual observer would have considered him a man 
particularly fond of the luxuries of life, and if his 



8 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

ideas of enjoyment had been under discussion 
one would have said that the race-track and 
bridge whist took the lead and religious matters 
were left to the women of his family. Instead, 
this man, in a conversation regarding his hotel 
success, remarked that he felt his prosperity was 
entirely due to the fact that for five years 
he had been a patient student of Mental 5'^-'*- 
ence, and was applying its laws to his daily 
affairs. 

"When things go at all wrong with me," he 
said, *'and I feel nervous or out of sorts, I go at 
once to my room, sit alone, and take a half -hour 
of concentration, until I grow peaceful. I know 
I have no right to mix with my employees or 
guests until I have harmonious conditions within 
myself. I am my own heaven and hell, my own 
failure or success. It is not always my fault if 
things go wrong, but it is my fault if they do not 
become righted. It is my fault if I do not make 
a success of whatever I undertake. Until five 
years ago I had no success in anything. I blamed 
Fate and conditions and every body and thing 
but myself. Then I went into the study of Mental 
Laws and began to learn what a limitless field the 
mind has and what wonderful powers are con- 
tained in the spirit of man, and since then every- 
thing has turned my wa}^ Whatever I undertake 
succeeds, and I have no trouble with help or 
business associates. Any passing disturbance I 
can trace to its source and allay." 



THE SCIENCE OF SENSIBLE THINKING 9 

These words from a practical business man 
were especially interesting. 

The earth has too many expensive churches and 
too much Sunday religion. What it wants is a 
religion that is applied every hour of the day in 
the street and mart and office and home — a re- 
ligion which helps men to be happy in their work 
an4 makes their employees and associates happy. 
A religion to keep health of body and mind and 
harmony and hope in the mental atmosphere and 
to create a heaven right here on earth. 

The purpose of this book is to assist those who 
seek a simple, practical method of applying the 
laws of Mind to the daily affairs of life. 

The book makes no claim of originality of 
thought or of literary excellence. Its ideas are 
-as old as the universe. The central theme may 
be found in the Vedas and in all the later Bibles 
of the world. These old, old truths have been 
revamped and presented to the public by gifted 
minds in countless forms. Many of these forms 
have been beautiful and of rare literary value. 
This book aims only at simplicity and practi- 
cality in the use of these age-old truths. 

It aims to help many, not to please the few. 
This work is not intended to compete for im- 
perishable honors in the halls of art, but to be 
here and now a daily help to struggling souls on 
life's crowded highways. 

2 



IV 

THE LIFE WORTH WHILE 

Like one blindfolded groping out his way, 
I will not try to touch beyond to-day. 
Since all the future is concealed from sight, 
I need but strive to make the next step right. 

THE Life Worth While" differs in the minds 
of individuals. That which seems worth 
while to one may seem unendurable to another; 
and so any analysis of the subject must be made 
from the purely personal standpoint, and must 
not be considered an effort to lay down arbitrary 
laws for the human race to follow. 

The religious fanatic in certain parts of India 
thinks life is worth while if he is enabled to sit 
in one position for ten years and to suffer physical 
anguish while he holds his arm above his head 
in order to prove his willingness to mortify the 
body. Hundreds of devotees do him reverence, 
and furnish him with food to sustain life in order 
that he may continue to suffer; and in this pe- 
culiar manner he illustrates his ideal of the life 
worth while. 

The Yogi, who is of a higher order of mind, be- 



THE LIFE WORTH WHILE ii 

lieves the only life worth while is one devoted 
to religious communings and to a study of the 
Creative Powers which caused this universe to 
come into material expression. He lives much 
alone, dwells frequently in caves for long periods 
of time; and comes forth to associate with his 
kind only as he can cast spiritual light upon 
life's pathways. He avoids all excesses; he eats 
merely to sustain life, dresses solely to cover the 
body from heat or cold, bathes twice a day, 
never feasts or fasts inordinately, and ignores aU 
mortal aims, ambitions, and occupations. 

The inventor in his laboratory, the creator in 
the world of art or literature in his study, the 
nun in her cell, the Salvation Army enthusiast in 
her street concert, the woman of fashion in her 
opera -box, the financier in adding millions to 
millions, all feel that they are living the life 
worth while. 

' To each one the life of any of the others would 
be unendurable.' So long as there is deep interest, 
enthusiasm, and pleasure in the life we are living 
that life must be worth while, even if to the ob- 
server it seems frivolous or mistaken. The world 
is made interesting by its variety of inhabitants, 
with their varying ideas and occupations. Peo- 
ple it with one kind of human beings, all bent 
on the same object and doing the same kind of 
work or following the same kind of pleasure, 
and earth would become intolerably monotonous. 
'Even the frivolous things, the mistaken things. 



12 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and the wrong things which people do are some- 
times worth while, because they lead those who 
are engaged in them to knowledge of their worth- 
lessness.' Looking back along the road of life, 
many of us can see where we profited by pursuing 
the wrong trail for a season. We learned that it 
led to the land of nowhere or into jungles and 
quagmires, and now we are protected for ever- 
more — in this incarnation or another — from want- 
ing to tread that path. 

Not every soul can win the race 

By always running right. 
Some feet must tread the mountain's base 

Before they gain the height. 

Yet if this consciousness of what is best and 
right, and wise and true, be born in a man, or 
bred in him from his cradle to maturity, blest is 
he that need not learn through his mistakes! 
But doubly, then, is he blest if with this con- 
sciousness dwell sympathy and understanding for 
those who must learn the lesson otherwise. For 
sympathy is the keynote to the life worth while. 

Most lives contain something which makes 
them worth while; but once, at least, I have 
seen a life which seemed to me utterly worthless. 
An elderly woman, going down into the valley of 
old age, born to wealth, wedded to one who had 
given her kindness and devotion, yet living a 
life of utter selfishness; concerned only with the 
events of her personal social circle; worrying 



THE LIFE WORTH WHILE 13 

about her gowns and her menus, stimulating a de- 
pleted system to carry her through her petty 
ambitions, and seeking sleep through the medium 
of drugs. Yet when this woman was born there 
was a great rejoicing, for she inherited wealth 
and an honorable name and every blessing. 

Surely no child born in a poor tenement-house 
or no foundling left upon a doorstep ever made 
life less worth while than this favorite of fortune. 
For even upon the verge of the grave she had 
failed to learn how trivial and petty were her 
aims and ambitions, and no regret for wasted 
opportunities touched her atrophied old heart. 
Such a life must renew itself in a later incarnation, 
in poverty and loneliness; and, spurred by neces- 
sity, it must struggle out into the light of knowl- 
edge and learn the blessedness of work and the 
growth which comes through effort. 

My own ideal of the life worth while is one 
which brings into play all the physical, mental, 
and spiritual powers inherent in the human being. 
It includes growth along all of those lines, from 
the crudeness of adolescence to the maturity of age. 

First of all must come a purpose, an object. 
It may be the cultivation of a talent, it may be 
the learning of a trade, it may be the accomplish- 
ment of some philanthropic aim, or the estab- 
lishment of an ideal home, or the performance of 
a duty. But whatever it is, however simple or 
however great, there must be enthusiasm behind 
the impulse. 



14 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

And there must be something more than mere 
personal aggrandizement or the effort to outshine 
or outdo some other, or all others, to make it a 
corner-stone of the life worth while. 

With such a purpose in the heart, and a goal 
in the distance toward which continual effort is 
directed, there must be a consciousness of the 
necessity to be as well as to do, if the life is to 
be made worth while. So many of us, striving 
to achieve and to perfect the work we have 
chosen to do, fail to realize how much more im- 
portant is the work given us to do by the great 
Master — the perfecting of character. Should not 
that be considered the real work of a life worth 
while? 

In what I do I note the marring flaw, 
The imperfections of the work I see; 
Nor am I one who'd rather do than be, 

Since its reversal is Creation's law. 

Nay, since there lies a better and a worse, 
A lesser and a larger, in men's view, 
I would be better than the thing I do, 

As God is greater than his universe. 

He shaped Himself before He shaped one world: 
A million eons, toiling' day and night, 
He built Himself to majesty and might, 

Before the planets into space were hurled. 

And when Creation's early work was done. 
What crude beginnings out of chaos came — 
A formless nebula, a wavering flame, 

An errant comet, a voracious sun. 



THE LIFE WORTH WHILE 15 

And, still unable to perfect His plan, 

What awful creatures at His touch found birth — 
Those protoplasmic monsters of the earth, 

That owned the world before He fashioned Man. 

And now, behold the poor, unfinished state 
Of this, His latest masterpiece! Then why, 
Seeing the flaws in my own work, should I 

Be troubled that no voice proclaims it great? 

Before me lies the cycling rounds of years; 

With this small earth will die the thing I do; 

The thing I am, goes journeying onward through 
A million lives, upon a million spheres. 

My work I build, as best I can and may, 

Knowing all mortal effort ends in dust. 

I build myself, not as I may, but must. 
Knowing, for good or ill, that self must stay. 

Along the ages, out and on, afar. 

Its journey leads, and must perforce be made: 
Likewise its choice, with things of shame and shade. 

Or up the path of light, from star to star. 

When all these solar systems shall disperse. 
Perchance this labor, and this self-control, 
May find reward, and my completed soul 

Will fling in space a little universe. 

One who sets himself this task of perfecting 
his nature, as he goes along toward achievement, 
will find the analysis of his own motives and the 
cause of his own actions full of interest and 
benefit. Are you intent upon erecting a house 
of many stories? If so, why? Is it to build a 



i6 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

mansion taller than your neighbor's and one that 
shall cause all observers to envy you? Or is it 
to give comfort and light and fresh air to its 
inhabitants? 

Do you seek wealth? For what, then? Is it 
to enable you to give expensive dinners, to wear 
imported garments, and to outshine your com- 
rades in life's journey? Or is it to enable you to 
make yourself more useful in the world? And 
are you sufficiently acquainted with your own 
disposition and sure of your own good sense and 
will power to be certain that you would live the 
life worth while, and dispense your riches wisely, 
if you attained youx object? 

Do you seek fame and glory ? For what ? That 
you may be envied and lauded; or that you may 
develop the best that lies in you, use all your 
powers, and utilize all your talents; and after 
you have reached your goal that you may be an 
influence for good in the world? 

Only as we analyze our motives and bring them 
to the standard where they can meet the clear 
eyes of our ov/n consciousness can ambition fit 
into the life w^orth while. 

The man or woman who achieves great things 
in the mental world and who neglects the body, 
the health, the personal appearance, cannot live 
life to its fullness — or perfection. 

When we pass from earth we will dispense with 
this physical body; and as we go through each 
plane of life we will become more and more ethe- 



THE LIFE WORTH WHILE 17 

real, until at last we are simply luminous, spirit- 
ual beings clothed in a body of light. 

But until we enter these realms and while we 
are on earth the physical body deserves our 
care, our respect, and its measure of our attention. 
It was created by our thoughts and acts in other 
incarnations, and has been given us as the result 
of our own deeds in the past. Whatever it is, we 
made it so; and it behooves us to take good care 
of it while here, to refine it by our methods of 
life, to beautify it by our thoughts, and to keep 
it clean, strong, and well clothed. 

Comely clothing has its part in life, with 
lovely homes and fair scenery, with graceful 
furniture and appetizing food. All the material 
things of this life are meant for our ration- 
al enjoyment while we occupy the material 
body. 

To despise them, and to endeavor to live wholly 
in the spirit, before we are taken out of this realm, 
is to serve only one part of the school life intended 
for our development. To live wholly for and in 
material pleasures is to keep in the primary class 
of that school and refuse to progress to higher 
grades. The individual who appreciates the physi- 
cal and mental sides of existence and takes no 
interest in spiritual matters can never live the 
really worth-while life. 

Man is a triangle; and he is abnormal if any 
one side of this triangle is dwarfed. He is like 
a tree which roots deep into earth and spreads 



i8 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

out straggling, wide branches, but does not grow 
up into the hght. 

Have you not met the intellectual giant with 
a strong physique, a bulging brow, and brilliant 
eye, who scoffed at any idea of life immortal? 
Or who, if he did not scoff, turned a listless look 
and an indifferent ear to any remark upon spirit- 
ual subjects? 

And have you not felt that same shock which 
accompanies the first sight of a physically de- 
formed himian being? 

Even when such a person makes no reference 
to spiritual matters, the finely attuned human 
being with delicate perceptions misses something 
from his personality. 

Every thought we send from our mind carries 
with it a certain vibration. Every emotion we 
conceal in our hearts sends forth its influence. 
The man who has an awakened consciousness of 
his own divine inheritance may not speak of it; 
but he radiates a certain something which may 
be likened to the ultra-violet rays carrying heal- 
ing and beauty on their beams. 

The man who is agnostic, indifferent, or an 
unbeliever in anything beyond this physical plane 
of existence cannot radiate this light because he 
has not provided himself with the spiritual mech- 
anism which produces the violet rays of the soul. 

Wealth, education, and position may all en- 
able the individual who is properly equipped 
otherwise to live the life worth while in a broader 



THE LIFE WORTH WHILE 19 

and more useful manner than the poor man can 
live it. But the poor man, the uneducated and 
himible man, may live that life if he understands 
the real purpose of existence. 

There was a little frail laundress who supported 
four children and an aged, bedridden mother and 
a good-natured but weak-willed husband who was 
a periodical drunkard. 

When not in his cups the man was repentant, 
kindly, affectionate, and appreciative of all the 
good qualities of his life-mate. So she felt it her 
duty to bear with him and to regard his failing 
in the light of a physical malady. The bedridden 
and complaining old mother was a God-given 
duty which she must meet with cheerfulness and 
j)atience ; and her home must be made a place of 
brightness and merriment and comfort for her 
growing children. 

Without any deep wisdom or formulated ideas 
this simple woman lived the life worth while in all 
its beautiful completeness. Her humble tasks she 
performed with a deep sense of gratitude to her 
patrons and to her Creator that she was enabled 
to find employment and to sustain her family. 
There was always a smile on her face and a bright 
word of cheer on her lip. 

In every factory all over our land there are 
thousands of good girls possessed of beauty, youth, 
and all the longings for pleasure and fair apparel 
which accompanies youth and beauty. These 
girls are looking temptation in the face daily — 



20 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

listening to its seductive voice, yet turning away 
and performing weary and ofttimes distasteful 
work in order to keep their self-respect and to 
be worthy of the love and confidence of parents 
and relatives dependent upon them for support. 

Every such work-girl in our great country is 
living the life worth while. It does not matter 
what her creed, or how great her lack of education, 
or how limited her sphere in the world. The fact 
that she has chosen the rough, right way, and 
turned her back upon the seemingly smooth, 
wrong way, because she knew it to be wrong, 
places her in the ranks of those who are living 
the Hfe worth while. 

I once heard a man bemoaning the fact that 
he had failed to achieve anything in life. He had 
missed his early goal; he had not left a name 
in the world of manly endeavor. Yet this man 
had in early youth sacrificed personal pleasures 
and ambitions in order to devote his life to aiding 
needy relatives. He had made his name blest by 
the widow and the fatherless; and through 
his influence and example other lives were bet- 
tered and brightened. This man did not know 
that he had been living the Life Worth While. 
He imagined that he had failed because he had 
not carved his name in letters of gold on the 
temple of Mammon or Fame. 

The woman who makes an ideal home for her 
husband and her children; the man who keeps 
the flame of love and romance burning in the 



THE LIFE WORTH WHILE 21 

heart of the wife of his youth (passing by those 
temptations for adventure in the realm of passion 
which come to every man) ; the business man who 
prefers a clear, clean record and continual need 
of economy to affluence and graft; the woman 
who chooses hard work and self-respect before 
ease and shame — all these and many more, whose 
simple lives are unknown to the world, are living 
the life worth while. Viewed from every stand- 
point, life seems to be worth while. 

In this earthly life lie all the elements of beauty, 
happiness, and growth which the devout minds 
associate only with the life beyond. For earth is 
the anteroom of heaven, if we choose to see it so. 



V 

BEGIN NOW 

Lcve sent me f..srtb, to Love I go again, 
Fof~~l76ve~tf " a^' " Lad over all. Amen. 

IF you are the victim of failure, and are won- 
dering why you have not succeeded as well 
as many other less deserving people of your 
acquaintance, it might be well for you to cast a 
retrospective eye over your past. 

It is, of course, more agreeable to lay the blame 
of all your misfortunes upon Fate; but your future 
will stand a better chance of being brighter if 
you discover what part of it lies in yourself and 
learn how to overcome circumstances and change 
environment. 

Perhaps you started out on the get-rich-quick 
method of financiering. You made up your mind 
that old-fashioned ideas of industry and patient 
labor were all nonsense in this rapid age. You 
had examples of multimillionaires to offer as 
arguments when any one doubted your wisdom. 

But not every man can be a successful villain, 
thief, or liar. And the man who undertakes to 



BEGIN NOW 23 

follow the methods of great robbers on a small 
scale usually finds himself in prison or out of a 
position, instead of rich and popular. In the 
present stage of our evolution the world tempo- 
rarily admires a big swindler, but it eternally 
despises a little one. 

Better right-about-face and reconstruct your 
life on a wholly old-fashioned basis of integrity 
and worth. Perhaps you were meaning to walk 
the right path, but went astray and fell into the 
quagmires of error and sin. Now you do not 
know the way back and feel that it is too late to 
try and find the path. 

But there is never a soul so lost that it cannot 
get back into Truth's roadway if it cries persist- 
ently enough to the sentinels from the Invisible 
Realms, who stand near to help those who appeal 
to them. 

Keep calling; they will lift you from the quag- 
mire, but you must help yourself at the same time. 
God's angels help those who help themselves. 

Perhaps you have begun ten things and never 
finished one, and have formed slipshod methods 
of thought and action, which are the real cause 
of all your failures. 

You can do twenty things after a fashion, and 
nothing well. Yet you wonder why you have 
never found your place in the world and why 
your many capabilities have met with such poor 
reward. 

You may be one of those people who no sooner 



24 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

begin a piece of work than they are seized with 
a feverish desire to do something else, and so 
rush through what they have started to accom- 
pHsh at breakneck speed, sHghting the work in 
hand for the work in mind. 

Or, still worse, you may be a victim of the 
''By-and-by" and ''Time-enough" mottoes. 

Alas for the people who are always ''going'' 
to do " things 'M The Valley of Pretty Soon is 
white with the bleaching bones of men and women 
who died while telling how they were going to do 
this and that. 

Thought is power, and when thought is spent 
on the By-and-by instead of being used on the 
Now, it is as wasteful as to throw gold into the 
sea instead of sending it into circulation to benefit 
humanity. 

If you have an ambition or purpose in your 
mind, act upon it at once. There is not an hour to 
waste. Do something toward beginning. Rouse 
yourself from the lethargy of dreams and make 
a start on facts. It is wonderful what power comes 
to us after we really begin any undertaking. 
With every postponement of that beginning, just 
so much power is dissipated. The road to success 
lies along the path of Decision, and up the hill of 
Endeavor, and across the bridge of Patience. 

The road to Defeat lies through the Valley of 
Pretty Soon, and the winding paths of Wait-a- while. 
' Whatever you intend to do By-and-by begin 
NOW, 



VI 

THE COMMON-SENSE LEAVEN OF THE LAW 

The truest greatness lies in being kind, 
The truest wisdom in a happy mind. 

THERE was a woman of limited mental pow- 
ers who listened to lectures on Mental 
Science and the power of mind, and she decided 
to develop her child of ten into a wonder of wit 
and a musical prodigy. 

She was utterly lacking in a sense of himior 
herself, and she had never been able to under- 
stand the different major and minor keys or the 
intricacies of time in music. 

She decided to give her son those things she 
lacked. She put him in the hands of music teach- 
ers, and she procured for him all the humorous 
books she could find in the libraries. Then she 
devoted an hour in the Silence each day to as- 
serting success for her child. 

But the boy was bored with the books; and 
he was the dullest pupil in music ever known; 
and after three years his discouraged music- 
master advised the mother to waste no more 

money on her son's musical education, but to 
3 



26 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

give him opportunity to develop his taste for 
athletics. Thereupon the mother decided there 
was no truth in Mental Science or the theories 
about the divine power in each soul to be what 
it willed to be. But the woman had not used 
good sense. 

Wit is a gift, like music, poetry, and painting. 
A sense of humor lacking, it is difficult to train 
or direct a mind to see the merry or absurd or 
comical side of things. It would be impossible 
to teach a boy born with a mechanical genius to 
compose oratories or epics. It would be a waste 
of time to try. Just so it would be folly to try 
to train the serious or philosophical mind to 
humor. 

Let each human being grow into the best of his 
own kind. Train him along natural lines — that 
is the way to educate. 

Common sense is quite another thing. It can 
be cultivated by teachers and parents in children 
who do not seem to possess it in any degree. But 
first the parents and the teachers must possess it — 
and few do. 

I have seen a dreamy, visionary, improvident, 
and extravagant boy trained into practical pru- 
dence, thrift, and economy by the persistent 
guidance of an uncle he loved and who loved him. 
The brain-cells were entirely remade in the course 
of a few years of constant association with the 
uncle. 

Fear is self-consciousness sometimes, some- 



COMMON-SENSE LEAVEN OF THE LAW 27 

times an anemic condition, sometimes the result 
of false education. The child that never hears 
stories about the ''dark," who never read ''Little 
Red Riding-hood" and other fear-inciting tales, 
and who has not been nagged and scolded by its 
parents in the effort to make it a perfect child, 
is not liable to feel fear on slight provocation. 
The old theology with its absurd and blasphe- 
mous stories of lakes of hell-fire for the children of 
unbelievers, and an avenging and frowning God, 
did much to awaken fear in children and render 
them nervous and timid. 

I have heard mature men describe the nights 
of horror they passed as little children after lis- 
tening to one of the old-time sermons and the 
awful terror of death which such pernicious teach- 
ings inculcated. A mother who during the nine 
months preceding her child's birth lives in fear 
of poverty or death, or who is in terror of a drunk- 
en or cruel or unkind husband, marks her child 
with a timid and easily frightened nature. 

A child of two or three years was given to 
hours of hysterical weeping without any appar- 
ent cause. But the cause lay in the fact that the 
mother lived with her husband's family and the 
baby was unwelcome to all, as the father was de- 
pendent financially on his parents. Yet such an 
unfortunate birth-mark can be educated out of 
the child by a cheerful and kind and wholesome 
environment. 

While the great talents cannot be educated 



28 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

into a human being, all the unworthy and un- 
fortunate traits can be educated out, and the 
great virtues awakened by persistent efforts on 
the part of associates, guides, and teachers. 

A man who wrote good strong prose and who 
was a devout believer in the power of the will to 
achieve anything wasted precious time and energy 
in a determination to be a poet. He studied all 
the laws governing verse, and he put large, virile 
ideas into correct mechanical form. Yet he was 
unable to produce one line of poetry. All he wrote 
in verse left his readers cold and unstirred; many 
of his would-be poems jarred like discords in 
music, even though they ''scanned" according to 
rule. But the divine something was not there. 
He had mistaken his vocation. In our applica- 
of this great Law, of the power of the Will to 
achieve results, we must employ reason and logic. 
We must use this law along the line of least re- 
sistance. 

Finding where our strongest powers lie, and 
our best abilities, we should turn our whole intel- 
lectual and spiritual batteries in that direction. 
Think, study, meditate, affirm, pray, and work 
to attain desired results in the undertaking for 
which we are fitted by nature. The man who is 
color-blind and unable to distinguish shades and 
tones easily may overcome this misfortune to a 
great degree by patient practice in studying 
colors. But he should never seek a position on 
trains or ships, where the observance of signals 



COMMON-SENSE LEAVEN OP THE LAW 29 

is an important part of duty; nor should he try- 
to become an artist. In neither field could he 
gain honors. 

Children should be watched as they develop 
into thinking beings, and their tastes and ten- 
dencies should be carefully noted by wise parents 
and instructors. Then every effort should be 
made according to old and new thought methods 
to encourage the growth of the very best quali- 
ties and to eliminate by lack of use all undesi- 
rable traits and propensities. 

By encouraging words and by forceful silent 
thought vibrations the most unpromising child 
may be helped to grow into what a wise parent 
desires. But the wise parent never desires the 
impossible. He does not try to make a mechanic 
out of a musical prodigy, nor a musical prodigy 
out of a born mechanic who is tone-deaf. He 
does not try to produce a Beau Brummel or a 
dilettante out of an athlete whose nature cries 
for the open, nor a farmer out of one who is never 
content save with a book in hand. 

Find what your child can best do, what he is 
best fitted by nature to undertake. Then give 
him the benefit of your affirmations for success. 
All New Thought methods should first fit into 
God's supreme plan. Then they cannot fail. 



VII 

MODERN MARRIAGE 

This ever-growing argument of sex 
Is most unseemly and devoid of sense. 
Why waste more time in controversy, when 
There is not time enough for all of love, 
Our rightful occupation in this life ? 

WHY the contention, the separations, the 
ever-increasing ratio of divorces that follow 
the marriages of to-day? In short, what is the 
matter with the modern marriage? 

There is nothing the matter with modern mar- 
riage. 

The trouble lies with modern men and women. 

And there is nothing the matter with modem 
men and wom.en save growing-pains. 

When the boys and girls are suffering from 
growing-pains they lose the charm of early child- 
hood and display ungraceful and awkward traits; 
they do not know what to do with their hands 
and feet; and their manners and attitudes are 
self-conscious. They are frequently in the way 
of their elders. 

So the men and women who are passing from 



MODERN MARRIAGE 31 

early immature social conditions to a higher state 
are similarly afflicted. 

They have lost the old repose of accepted tradi- 
tions; they are restless with self-consciousness; 
and their manners and emotions cause them to 
be in their own way and in the way of others. 
It is often remarked by the pessimist, who feels 
that the race is going to the devil, that divorce 
is a modern evil, and that its frequency to-day 
proves how the human family in civilized lands 
has degenerated. 

Our grandparents regarded divorce as a dis- 
grace. There was one divorce in their day to a 
hundred in the present time. But that does not 
mean that there were ninety-nine happy raarri- 
ages in those days compared to one in this epoch. 
'^" ■"- It means that men and women bore their mari- 
tal unhappiness more patiently and silently in 
olden times, because it was the custom, and be- 
cause they dreaded the scandal and reproach 
which would result if they sought for freedom. 

Women especially in the days of our ancestors 
had not begun to feel growing-pains. They ac- 
cepted whatever ills fell to their lot in marriage 
with a certain ''Patient Griselda" spirit, believ- 
ing it to be woman's sphere in life to submit to 
man's will in all things. 

If the man built large, comfortable barns for 
his stock and housed his horses raore luxuriously 
than his family, if he compelled his wife to do 
her household work under the most trying condi- 



32 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

tions, if he was niggardly with his money and 
humiliated her to the dust by making her beg 
for every penny she spent on her wearing-ap- 
parel, and then complained of her extravagance, 
she bore it all without an idea of rebelling and 
told her troubles only to her mother, who advised 
her to be patient and make the best of her situ- 
ation. 

She had little opportunity to compare her des- 
tiny with other lives, as homes were isolated, 
methods of travel primitive, and newspapers did 
not lay bare the domestic lives of communities, 
as in the present day. 

Even infidelity on the part of the husband 
was borne as best it might be in those days, be- 
cause separation of man and wife left the wife 
with a stigma upon her for ever. And rather than 
return to her parents' home, branded and ostra- 
cized, she remained in her husband's house and 
seem^ed to ignore her humiliating position. 

To listen to the prattling of people who delight 
in lauding the past to the detriment of the pres- 
ent, one would be led to believe that our ancestors 
were all models of nobility and that the men and 
women of the present day are degenerate speci- 
mens of worthy forebears. 

But a little investigation will prove that the 

sins of omission and commission of our ancestors 

produced the *'divorce-while-you-wait" type of 

men and women of our own times. 

- Had the old man never failed in his duty the 



MODERN MARRIAGE 33 

new woman would never have sprung into ex- 
istence.v' All the one-time domestic virtues of 
women were taken as a matter of course by the 
men folk. 

Woman's work was in the home, and it was a 
too generally accepted idea that she was inca- 
pable of handling money, and that she needed no 
diversion, no independent purse, and no mental 
outlook beyond the walls of her home and the 
village church. 

The type of man who held such ideas prepared 
the way for the army of suffragists who march 
through the land to-day. 

The Puritan Fathers were merciless in their 
attitude toward a woman who made a misstep in 
the path of rectitude, and the two standards of 
morals, which made light of the sin of the erring 
youth and damned for ever the erring girl, helped 
to bring about the revolt of woman against the 
established order of things. 

The silence of mothers on matters of sex has 
paved a broad highway for unhappy marriages, 
and now that women are reading, thinking, and 
observing, they dare to stand forth in the light 
of Knowledge and demand cleaner, saner, and 
safer laws to protect them from the evils which 
the old-fashioned wives endured in silent shame 
and sorrow. 

It has been the boast of senseless and unthink- 
ing mothers, backed by selfish and uncompre- 
hending fathers, that their daughters went to 



34 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

the marriage altar ''as ignorant and innocent in 
mind as new-bom babes'' in matters of sex. It 
would be just as sensible to boast tha: a school- 
teacher went to her duties ignorant of reading 
and writing or a musician ignorant of notes. The 
misery, the destruction to health and happiness, 
the wretchedness which has gone into the second 
and third generations through this ignorance of 
girl wives and mothers regarding the natural 
laws which govern marriage and motherhood 
would fill volumes if written out even in short- 
hand. 

The silence of fathers toward their sons on 
these great laws of life has aided and abetted the 
natural selfishness and sensuousness of the mas- 
culine nature in sex relations, and the fact that 
until within a comparatively short period of time 
all physicians were men has been another factor 
in the building of conditions which in their time 
inevitably produced revolt. 

The report of the ''Committee of One Hun- 
dred'' on health, together with the statistics of 
the Board of Health of New York and other 
states, compels the m.ost optimistic mind to real- 
ize the menace to the national conservation of 
vitality which lies in the ignorance of men and 
women in matters of sex hygiene. 

V/hen men are educated in early youth to im- 
derstand the importance of keeping the blood 
pure and the body and mind clean, in order to 
produce sane, strong children who are mentally 



MODERN MARRIAGE 35 

and physically a credit to the race, there will be 
a notable reduction in divorces, and wives and 
offspring will find less and less need of the sur- 
geon's and physician's skill. 

Every day divorces are being granted to wive^ 
for all sorts of causes, which, if truthfully stated, 
would be from one cause only — the vile and pro- 
miscuous habits of the husband before marriage 
and after. 

And every day women are sacrificed on the 
surgeon's table and little children are born blind, 
scroftilous, and demented from the same causes. 
Men do not go wilfully and knowingly into these 
detestable states. They do not with open eyes 
and minds seek to become moral and physical 
lepers. It is all the result of silent parents and 
silent physicians. 

Men must be educated in eugenics ; they must 
be taught the great law of self-control, and they 
must understand the high m^eaning of the Vv^ords 
husband and father. Then we will find marriage 
growing to be a success and divorce an obsolete 
word. Together with this all-important educa- 
tion of men, women must be made to cultivate 
the unusual virtue of com^mon sense before mar- 
riage will reach an absolute condition of success. 

The failings of men which lead to divorce 
are usually of a glaring nature, of such a nature 
that he who runs may read. Drunkenness, or 
the overuse of intoxicants, which destroy the 
reasoning powers and the judgment; infidelity 



36 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and all its ramifications of disease; violent tem- 
per; laziness and failure to provide for a family — 
these are the main chapters in the book of mas- 
culine offenses against happy homes. But the 
offenses of wives are so frequently subtle and 
elusive, and so veiled from the public eye, that 
only those who live in the closest relations may 
discover them. 

They are little foxes in the vines and parasites 
in the trees. 

The American girl is almost invariably a spoiled 
child before she reaches adolescence. 

She rules her father and mother, and her broth- 
ers wait upon her. She is virtually the head of 
the house, and her wish is law and her whims are 
like royal edicts. If she marries the spoiled son 
of a fond mother it is a case of Greek meeting 
Greek, and discord must ensue. And if she mar- 
ries an unselfish and worshiping husband, she 
often forgets that there is such a thing as the 
turning of a crushed worm, and imposes upon his 
patience and kindness and unselfishness until he 
walks forth to meet her only in the divorce court. 

Yet the weapons she has used in slaying Cupid 
have been concealed from all eyes save her hus- 
band's or other eyes under her roof. And the 
undisceming public is more than liable to be- 
lieve she is the injured party when the divorce 
occurs. 

The passion of many women for hotel life, for 
excitement, and for display amounts to a disease. 



MODERN MARRIAGE 37 

It is, perhaps, the swinging of the pendulum 
from the dull and dreary monotony which char- 
acterized the lives of their foremothers. The 
women of this generation are in many ways suf- 
fering from a sort of hysteria caused by the sup- 
pression of the emotional natures of their mothers 
and grandmothers. Just as sons of clergymen ' 
do to excess, frequently, everything which their 
fathers refused to do in reason. 

The grandmothers and mothers who lived only 
to work and make the home comfortable for the 
men folk produced, by the crucifixion of all natural 
desires for pleasure and amusement, as descend- 
ants a race of women pleasure-seekers. But in 
his taste for home life man changes little. He 
is the same in every generation. And the woman 
who wants to make the man she marries happy 
needs to understand this fact ; and whatever else 
she may ask of him, to give him first the foun- 
dation of a comfortable, beautiful, well-ordered, 
and attractive home, where even the transient guest 
can feel the atmosphere of well-being and content. 
This can be made only by the mental emanations 
of its inhabitants. 

A woman who sets forth in married life deter- 
mined to make a real wife and mother has chosen 
the most wonderful and fascinating career it is 
possible for her to pursue, and its scope is as wide 
as the universe. To create such a home and mag- 
netize it with the love and enjoyment of a good 
woman's mind is to prepare an anteroom for heaven. 



38 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

Many a man inclined to stray into forbidden 
folds and to seek unwholesome associations would 
linger in this anteroom were it provided for him 
by love and good sense, in place of his being forced 
into the imnattiral surroundings of hotels. 

Petty jealousies of wives, hampering a good- 
hearted man in his impulses toward his relatives 
and near friends, are ofttim.es causes of divorces. 
A man has been known to marry for love (as men 
usually do) and to set forth with every intention 
of being a fair and kind and just husband; but 
before many months he found his relatives, his 
men comrades, and even his books and domestic 
pets objects of a small-minded woman's nagging 
jealousy. And Cupid vms driven out of doors, 
never to return. 

Unreasonable extravagance of women is another 
cause of disaster to the marital association; and 
this propensity drives many a good-hearted man 
whose great desire is to please his wife into dis- 
honesty and double dealing in business matters. 

Behind prison doors to-day men are serving 
long sentences v/ho sinned first through weakness 
and over-devotion to the whims of selfish and 
unthinking wives. The indolent wife, who settles 
down lazily into the comfort of a good home, 
satisfied with the fact that she is married to a 
man who loves her and unconscious that she 
must make an effort to keep her husband in love, 
is another likely candidate for the divorce court. 

In our own time and clime ninety-nine men 



MODERN MARRIAGE 39 

of each hundred Hke to feel proud of their wives, 
They enjoy seeing them look well and regret to 
observe the effect of time upon their beauty. 
The woman who does not try to keep herself 
attractive and who allows self-indulgence and in- 
dolence to destroy her figure and complexion is 
inviting unhappiness to come into her home. 

In this busy age, when trains, ships, telegraphs, 
and telephones keep the whole world in touch, 
men are aware of the existence of women who 
understand the art of defying time and who 
remain attractive despite the passing of years. 
Even in remote country places men have ceased 
to regard old age for the matron as a necessity. 
They realize there is something lacking in the 
temperament of a woman who lets herself go 
merely because she is a wife and a mother. 

Since men view the subject in this light, the 
wise woman will not permit her husband to feel 
ashamed of her. She will think of the art of 
preservation of her charms as one of her sacred 
duties, and she will regard the gymnasium and 
the study of physical culture and the practice of - 
mental calisthenics with respect close to reverence. 
In the new life which has come to women in the 
past generation there lies a danger of becoming 
too absorbed in personal pursuits to keep in 
touch with the tastes and ambitions of the hus- 
band — even to lose all interest in them. 

It is well for husband and wife to have their 
separate occupations and to follow separate tastes 



40 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and pleasures to a certain degree. But that degree 
must never lead to diverging interests and must 
never leave the husband feeling solitary and with- 
out the companionship or sympathy of the wife, 
either in his business or his amusements; nor 
must the wife be left to find sympathy or admira- 
tion elsewhere than at home. 

Since the home is the foundation of the nation, 
it is weU worth while for individuals who establish 
homes to make some personal sacrifice of time and 
impulses to create a solid rock bed for that fotm- 
dation. 

The lover finds it easy to show an interest in 
the most frivolous or feminine accomplishment of 
his lady-love, to admire her embroidery, to listen 
to her singing, or to help her fit up her booth for a 
charity bazaar. And whatever she says or does 
wins his attention. Why not continue that atti- 
tude after marriage and give the wife the happy 
sense of copartnership in all her doings? 

Every wife, as a rule, is ready to be taught some- 
thing of her husband's business or professional 
affairs, enough to make her understand his ambi- 
tions and sympathize with his trials; but it is 
only the occasional wife who has the perception to 
understand the delicate difference between sympa- 
thizing and interfering with a man's affairs. Per- 
haps it is because of this danger of interference 
that so few men make their wives acquainted with 
their business lives. And this is a point on which 
women need training. A tactful man can so train 



MODERN MARRIAGE 41 

the woman he loves, before marriage, by praise 
of other women who have shown the art of helping 
their husbands by the right attitude of mind and 
the right methods of action. Surely there is noth- 
ing too much trouble, nothing too time-taking, 
which may lead to a successful marriage! It is, 
the important work of the httman race. For what 
is the worth of successful art or successful busi- 
ness, what is the worth of peace, power, and pros- 
perity in a nation, what is the use of international 
arbitration unless that nation is founded on hap- 
py, clean, harmonious homes? 

One danger which menaces the American native 
proper (the unmixed American) and menaces 
happy home life is the alarming tendency of the 
present generation to avoid parentage. 

Young married people in good health, with good 
brains and bodies to transmit to offspring, resort 
to even criminal methods of prevention, and wives 
who might be the proud mothers of statesmen or 
beautiful daughters in the days to come remain 
barren wilfully and frequently impair their health 
and beauty rather than accept the responsibilities 
of motherhood. 

Here again we find the reflex action of mind; 
for often these wives are daughters of mothers 
who have borne too many children and have 
missed the happiness of youth and the relaxation 
a perfect home should give in the never-ceasing 
cares of a large family. I do not know what the 
statistics state regarding the relative number of 



42 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

divorces among childless people and those who 
are parents, but I do know that Nature intended 
marriage to be followed by parentage as nattirally 
as summer follows spring. And I know that even 
the sad experience of a motherhood which lasts 
but a few brief hours often makes a new and 
indescribably sacred bond of affection between a 
husband and wife. There are many happy mar- 
riages where no children are, it is true, yet the wife 
who has never felt the stirring of a little being 
under her heart has missed one of life's and love's 
most wonderful experiences. 



VIII 

THE GENEROUS YEARS 

Time cannot take 
My three great jewels from the crown of hfe — 
Love, sympathy, and faith: and year on year 
He sees them grow in luster and in worth, 
And glowers by me plucking at his beard 
And dragging as he goes a useless scythe. 

JUST as you think of the years, just as you 
make use of them, so will be their attitude 
toward you. 

Realize first of all that you are greater than 
the years, greater than time, greater than eter- 
nity, because you are part of the vast cause which 
made them all. 

Realize next that the years have accumulated 
wisdom, power, and knowledge of health, beauty, 
wealth, and happiness, and that your part Hes in 
winning from them the laws governing these 
things. 

So long as you regard time as a cruel monopolist 
who will wrest from you all your dearest posses- 
sions and give you nothing in rettim, you are 
preparing the way for such fears to materialize. 



44 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

But it rests with you to make the years generous 
and benevolent instead of grasping and cruel. 

The years may be compared to droves of wild 
horses. If you fly in terror before them they will 
trample you imder their feet, but if you tame and 
harness them they will carry your chariot to the 
summit of success. 

Again, we may think of them as adepts and 
masters, dwelling in the temple of life, ready to 
impart their wisdom to those who come reverently 
to them, those who bring patience and faith in the 
search for eternal truths. 

It has been the custom of the foolish world for 
ages to think, talk, and write of beauty, joy, and 
happiness as pertaining only to early youth. 

This same foolish and mistaken world has edu- 
cated woman in the idea that each year after her 
first score comes to her as an enemy — a highway- 
man — bent upon robbing her of all she holds 
most precious. 

It has taught man to regard as a limited one his 
period of mental and physical prowess; and so 
these false and unwholesome traditions have 
helped to hurl the race into premature decay and 
death. 

The wise individual faces each year with expec- 
tancy and courage, mingled with reverence, yet 
with an inner consciousness of superiority. 

Expectancy of new revelations of life, courage 
to meet whatever comes, reverence for the accu- 
mulated wisdom which the years carry, and a 



THE GENEROUS YEARS 45 

sense of superiority through the knowledge that 
mankind is the highest expression of the creative 
power yet evolved, and the possession of a think- 
ing brain and a loving heart place him in the 
rank with the lords of the universe. 

On her birthday morning every woman should 
talk with the year which is coming as v/ith a friend 
who is crossing her threshold to bring her gifts. 
Let her say, ''Oh, Year, I welcome you. Let me 
come close to you; let me walk beside you and 
listen to all the secrets which you keep in your 
great soul for my sharing. You can teach me the 
divine laws of health, beauty, peace, usefulness, 
and consequent happiness. You can teach me 
order and system in all my ways. You can im- 
press upon me the power which comes through 
the exercise of patience, the strength which re- 
sults from cold rains and biting frosts, the 
pleasure which lies in giving of my bounty to 
others, and the dignity and pride which accom- 
pany the preparation of beautiful and appropriate 
apparel for each season. 

''If I breathe in your pure airs, if I live accord- 
ing to those natural laws which govern you, if 
I accept the spring, the summer, the autumn, 
the winter of life as perfect expressions of God's 
bounty, then I, too, may grow in beauty and 
charm and opulence as the year grows. You have 
come to teach me these truths; you have come 
to help me; and I will be richer and happier from 
your association. And I will be able to under- 



46 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

stand your laws of perpetual rejuvenation and to 
illustrate them." 

Each man should welcome the year which adds 
maturity to his life as a teacher who has come 
to instruct him in power and knowledge of the 
deeper meanings of existence. He should expect 
to grow in strength and worth and to make a 
nobler example of his life with the passing of each 
twelve months. 

Those who face the years with such resolutions, 
and who determine to be the recipients, not the 
losers, in their encounter with Time, will find life 
growing richer and more interesting as they pass 
from early youth into maturity and from maturity 
into the still larger field of vision afforded as they 
climb the western hiU. 

For the last earthly journey is not a descent, 
but a climb, for those who take toll from the 
years instead of paying it. 

We should not talk of going down into the 
valley of death or old age. 

We should stand upon the summit of a hill 
from where we behold the- world we have tra- 
versed and the shining peaks of the world be- 
yond, whither we are going. 

Expect much of the years. Then set yourself 
to work to aid those years in giving you what 
you expect. 

Do you desire health? Think of the year as 
charged with health, and use all the opportunities 
it affords you to breathe deeply the fresh air it 



THE GENEROUS YEARS 47 

offers and sustain yourself with its fresh fruits 
and vegetables and its wholesome beverages. 
Keep your mind and your body clean; keep every 
muscle and organ active and free from impurities; 
let no part of yourself become sluggish or atrophied 
from lack of use. Believe health is your divine 
right, and declare it is yours every hour in the day. 

Do you desire beauty? Then declare beauty 
and think and talk of beautiful things and per- 
form beautiful deeds. Refuse to dwell upon ugli- 
ness in any form. Study the needs of your body, 
and reform such portions as do not please your 
sense of beauty. Call in such aids as science and 
hygiene have provided for the accomplishment of 
your purpose. 

Clothe yourself in accordance with your en- 
larged understanding of the laws of beauty; and 
always remember that the body is only the casket 
of the inner jewel, and let your spirit, the divine 
gem, shine through the casket and create a radi- 
ance about you wherever you go. 

Do you desire opulence? Then think opulence; 
be large in your affections; give freely of good 
'will, of praise, of appreciation, of helpful words 
and acts. Never allow yourself to begrudge 
another what has come to him; never dispar- 
age another's achievements. Let your mind be 
planted with seeds of love and joy and hope, and 
courage and universal good will, and opulent 
harvests shall grow therefrom. Think of each 
year as a sower scattering these seeds in yotir 



48 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

heart ; then water with the dews of sympathy and 
throw open the windows to the broad sunHght of 
heaven while they ripen. And as surely as the 
days come and go so surely shall your life grow 
in opulence, spiritual and material. ''Seek ye 
first the kingdom of heaven, and all other things 
shall be added." 

Sorrow may be — nay, must be — the portion 
some of the years bring you. But, understood and 
accepted as the working out of a divine law, with 
a holy purpose, strength, power, and an enlarged 
vision will be given you through this experience. 

There is no greater beautifier in life than a sor- 
row borne with reverent imderstanding and ac- 
cepted in that spirit. 

Let us meet the coming years with an invoca- 
tion. 

Oh, wonderful years, share with me your under- 
standing of life; impress upon my mortal mind 
the beauty of temperate living, the joy of useful 
labor, the efficacy of applied thought, the re- 
vealing miracles of prayer. 

Lead me to the Great Sotrrce from which comes 
your eternal youth, undying beauty, vital force, 
and creative powers. Help me to claim my own; 
to share with others all that is mine, and to make 
life on earth a growing glory until I pass onward 
to other realms. Amen. 



IX 

TO YOUNG MEN 

God chooses His own leaders in the world, 
And from the rest He asks but willing hands. 

As mighty mountains into place are hurled, 
While patient tides may only shape the sands. 

The weight of an eagle's hody is many times greater than 
that of the air on which it flies. It, therefore, naturally 
gravitates toward the earth. 

Under the laws of gravity it would, if left alone, naturally 
fall to the ground, never to rise again. But this monarch of the 
air has the power within itself, and of its ow?i right, to over- 
come the force of gravity and rise at will to realms beyond 
the clouds and the shadows of earth, into the clear sunlight of 
heaven. — From The Great Psychological Crime. 

YOU have your own night -key, young man, 
and you are your own master. 
No one asks where you are going or at what 
hour you will return. 
You do as you please. 

And if it pleases you to *'see life" and *'know 
the world," you consider it nobody's business. 
It is a part of every man's education, you say. 
And even if you plant a crop of wild oats, that. 



50 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

too, you believe to be included in your Life School 
Curriculum. 

Every protest made you consider *' preaching/*' 
"^ But have you never observed that life itself 
is a great preacher? 

Life and Father Time are two great moralists. 

Even when they seem to be laughing comrades, 
helping you sow your crop of *'oats," they are 
sneering at you secretly and waiting the horn- 
when they can talk to you on the benefits of mo- 
rality and right living. 

The Great Creative Power which made the 
Universe, and systems of universes, gives each 
human being certain nervous forces and vital 
qualities.. 

Properly used, these qualities and forces can 
make man almost Godlike in his mental, physical, 
and spiritual strength. 

Just as a large fortune properly managed and 
saved can accomplish miracles in the way of use- 
fulness when rightly applied. 

But if that fortune is dissipated day by day, 
month by month, year by year, its possessor 
eventually finds himself a pauper. 

Precisely so the virile man finds himself a 
pauper, and worse than a pauper, if he begins 
sowing his wild oats and "seeing life" and ''know- 
ing the world" according to the standards set 
by the devotees of Folly. 

Look about you and take mental notes of middle- 
aged men who have led the life you are living. 



TO YOUNG MEN 51 

You will see gray faces, or blotched and bloated 
ones; eyes dull and lifeless, or glaring with the 
brilliancy of stimulants ; and bodies which should 
be in their prime crippled with disease or shape- 
less with self-indulgence. 

Look farther and learn something of the con- 
dition of the children of these men. 

Among them you will find the crippled, the 
blind, the idiotic, the deaf and dumb, the weak- 
lings, and the insane. 

And were the family physicians of these men 
to tell you all they know you would lie awake with 
horror, wondering how the impression has gone 
abroad that men can sin and pay no penalty; 
that woman alone pays for her errors. 

Woman does pay a big price; not only for her 
own sins of the senses, but she pays also for the 
sins of her lover or her husband. 

Our asylums for the insane and our homes for 
incurables are half filled with women and children 
who have paid the price for the men who believed 
it was nobody's business if they chose to *'see 
life" and ''know the world." 

When a woman makes a wrong step in this 
direction her punishment usually is swift, and the 
world knows of it. 

A man's punishment is frequently long de- 
layed, but when it comes it demands interest on 
all the time which has elapsed. Many young 
and middle-aged men you see walking with canes 
and crutches, and paying large commissions to 



52 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

physicians to say they have ''rheumatism" and 
''neuritis" and other commonplace maladies, are 
victims of their own vices. They have "seen 
life" as you are seeing it. 

Look at the faces of men in fashionable 
clubs; how many of these men are, at forty or 
fifty or sixty, types which seem admirable to 
you? 

You are young, in the morning of life; before 
you waste your splendid youth and prepare yoiir- 
self to be a physical pauper at middle life stop 
and think of these things a bit. 

And consider what qualities and propensities 
and what kind of blood you are preparing to give 
your tinbom children. 

No doubt it is your intention to give them a 
pure-minded and clean-bodied mother. 

But what sort of a father will they have? 

When you tell me that you are so dominated 
by inherited tendencies and mortal passions and 
appetites, and so surrounded by temptations 
that you cannot overcome circumstances and 
make a man of yourself, I ask you to read the 
above extract and to ponder upon it. 

Are you the self-confessed inferior of the eagle? 
Can you not overcome the law of inheritance or 
environment, which you say is keeping you from 
rising, and mount over circumstances and attain 
your goal? You tell me you have no wings ; that 
the eagle is provided with the mechanism which 
enables him to soar from low to high places, 



TO YOUNG MEN S3 

while you are cumbered with a body of appetites 
and passions which Hnk you to earth. 
- But never yet were there wings of birds so 
strong and mighty as the wings of the will of 
man; never were there heights so lofty for the 
feathered creature to seek as those which await 
the mind of man, once he spreads the pinions of 
his will and rises from the level places to the 
summits. 

Begin to-day to unfold these pinions. 

Relinquish some habit which you know in your 
secret heart is harmful, but which you believe 
you have not strength to overcome. 

It may be drink, it may be cigarettes, it may 
be drugs or extravagance or idleness or sensu- 
ality or a gross appetite or gambling; it may be 
a vacillating, changeable mind or a morbid de- 
pression that borders on melancholia, or fear 
and self -consciousness and a lack of self-reliance 
which prevents you from attempting any new 
venture; but whatever your besetting sin is you 
know, and you can rise over it as the eagle rises 
over the law of gravity and attains the moun- 
tain's peak. Unless you do unfold the hidden 
wings of your will and rise you must go lower in 
the himian scale than you stand to-day. 

There is no such thing as standing still in this 
world. Each soul is either a little stronger or 
a little weaker, a little nobler or a little less noble, 
a little more self-reliant or a little more depen- 
dent to-day than it was yesterday. 



54 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

The same process of change will take place 
to-morrow, and the next day, and the next. You 
may not be conscious of it, but the friends who 
saw you last year and see you now after an in- 
terval of months are able to say whether you 
have gone forward or backward in the way of 
character. 

They would not like to tell you so, perhaps, 
but they know. These things show in your ex- 
terior appearance and in your deportment. 

You are young, and the world is before you, 
but do not make the mistake of thinking there is 
time enough ahead for improvement. Each day 
the task will become a little more difnciilt. Each 
day yo-ur besetting weakness will be harder to 
overcome. Each day the heights will recede and 
seem more difficult of attainment. And each 
day your will's unused v\^ings will grow more 
inert. 

Unfold them to-day. 

Like a newly fledged bird, try only short flights 
at first. Do not expect to make the mountain 
summit in your first attempt. And even if you 
fail once or twice do not be discouraged. I have 
seen young birds fall over and over again, but 
finally soar beyond my vision. Fight away the 
thoughts of fear, doubt, and despondency which 
will flock about you at times like swarms of 
vicious insects. They belong to the marshy 
places, and after you rise higher they will leave 
you. 



TO YOUNG MEN 55 

There is a God of love, and you are His ex- 
pression. You are divine, and your nature is all 
love and strength and power. Doubt and de- 
spondency are serious hindrances to the use of 
these qualities. 

A young man, scarcely more than a lad, says 
of an enterprise he has in mind: *'I mean to 
get ahead of all rivals in the same line of en- 
deavor.'' 

I do not like this phrase, or the idea it involves. 
No man or woman should harbor the ambition 
to *'get ahead" of others in mental, moral, or 
purely business matters. Where there is con- 
test of physical powers, a swimming, running, or 
jimiping race, the expression is well enough; but 
outside of such-tests there are higher qualities to 
be considered in the effort toward achievements. 

In trades, in the professions, and in the arts 
there is never an exact method of procedure or 
an exact result which places these occupations on 
a level with physical sports. Individuality always 
enters into the success of any man in his life vo- 
cation, be that what it may. The one thing to 
consider in any occupation undertaken is the best 
and most complete development of individuality. 

Instead of lying awake nights and planning 
ways to *'get ahead" of competitors, devote your- 
self to the development of your best abilities, 
your most original powers, and your highest aspi- 
rations. 

''Get ahead of yourself," not of some rival. 



56 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

If you have a shop or an office next door to a 
competitor, wish him good fortune and say a 
word for him when occasion demands, and to 
3^ourself say, ''Whoever comes into this place of 
business shall receive the best treatment and the 
most courteous attention in my power to give.*' 



X 



MORBIDITIS 



When love, health, happiness, and plenty hear 
Their names repeated over day by day, 

They wing their way like answering fairies near, 
Then nestle down within our homes to stay. 

THE conceited girl or woman is tiresome and 
unpleasant as a companion, but the morbidly 
discontented woman is far worse. Perhaps you 
have met her, with her eternal complaint of the 
injustice of Fate toward her. 

She feels that she is born for better things than 
have befallen her; her family does not under- 
stand her; her friends misjudge her; the public 
slights her. 

If she is married she finds herself superior to 
her husband and to her associates. She is eter- 
nally longing for what she has not; and when she 
gets the thing craved for she no longer cares for 
it. It has come too late, she says. The sorrowful 
side of life alone appeals to her. This she believes 
is due to her ''artistic nature.'' The injustice of 

Fortune and the tmkindness of society are topics 
5 



58 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

dear to her heart. She finds her only rapture in 
misery. 

If she is rehgiously incHned she looks toward 
heaven with more grim satisfaction in the thought 
that it will strip fam.e, favors, and fortune from 
the unworthy than because it will give her the 
benefits she feels she deserves. She does not 
dream that she is losing years of heaven here 
upon earth by her own mental attitude. We 
build our heavens thought by thought. 

If you are dwelling upon the dark phases of 
your destiny and upon the ungracious acts of 
Pate, you are shaping more of the same experi- 
ence for yourself here and in realms beyond. You 
are making happiness impossible for yourself upon 
any plane. In your own self lies Destiny. 

I have known a woman to keep her entire family 
despondent for years by her continual assertions 
that she was out of her sphere, misunderstood 
and imappreciated. The minds of sensitive chil- 
dren accepted these statements and grieved over 
''poor mother's'' sad life imtil their own youth 
was embittered. The morbid mother seized upon 
the sympathies of her children like a leech and 
sapped their young lives of joy. 

The husband grew discouraged and indifferent 
under the continual strain, and v/hat might have 
been a happy home was a desolate one, and its 
memory is a nightmare to the children to-day. 

Understand yourself and your divine possi- 
bilities, and you will cease to think you are mis- 



MORBIDITIS 59 

understood. It is not possible to misunderstand 
a beautiful, sunny day. All nature rejoices in its 
loveliness. Give love, cheerfulness, kindness, and 
good will to all humanity, and you need not long 
worry about being misunderstood. Give the best 
you have to each object, purpose, and individual, 
and you will eventually receive the best from hu- 
manity. 

I doubt if a htmian being lives, no matter how 
seemingly fortunate and to be envied, who could 
not find a whole chapter of miseries to mourn 
over if he or she chose to turn over the leaves 
of Life's book to that particular page. In every 
life there is always something which might be 
bettered. 

One person likes his environment, but hates 
his occupation; another likes his work, but dis- 
likes his environment; one wants the city; an- 
other wants the country; and so on ad infinitum. 

You feel you are particularly unfortunate in 
not having a harmonious home, in not having 
more companionship with people who are con- 
genial, and in having a great many material 
worries. 

You carry always a face of sorrow and a look 
of sadness; and you tell me life grows more and 
more a very serious thing to you. You are mean- 
time forgetting that you are blest with health; 
that you are in possession of all your faculties; 
that you are not crippled or bedridden; and that 
you are pursuing an occupation which you Hke. 



6o THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

You breathe good fresh air in your home; you 
are not shut up in a tenement house; you are 
not confined in a factory all day; and you are not 
starved for good food. 

Why, my dear girl, with such a list of things 
which could make life hard indeed for one left 
out of what Fate gives you it seems to me your 
days should be one paean of thanks to God and 
one prayer for voice and words to praise Him for 
His manifold blessings. 

An inharmonious home is indeed a great trouble; 
but the only thing for one to do who suffers 
from such a cause is to be one note of harmony 
in the discords. 

Speak the silent word of love to each member 
of the family; say ''Peace, be still" to the 
troubled domestic ocean, and by every thought, 
word, and act set the example of harmony. 
Miracles have been wrought by one loving, pa- 
tient soul in a home of many wrangling minds. 
Refuse to quarrel; refuse to be sullen; refuse to 
be sarcastic; and by the example of love and 
kindness and good cheer shame the other 
members of the household into better be- 
havior. 

Then, if they continue to be disagreeable, speak 
the word of freedom to your own soul ; and pic- 
ture to yourself a life apart from the family. 
It will come to you if you live in a way deserving 
of this freedom. It will come either by a change 
in the people who make the discord or in your 



MORBIDITIS 6i 

change to other surroundings. It can never come 
while you are pitying yotirself . Self-pity is weak- 
ness and a waste of mental force. It is a great 
weakness of character to continually crave pity 
and sympathy and to want people to be sorry 
for you. 

Just as well might every pupil who is given a 
lesson ask all the teachers and all the other schol- 
ars to be ''sorry" and bestow sympathy. We 
are placed in this world where our actions and 
thoughts in other lives direct our path; and we 
are here to build character and learn the power 
which lies in our minds to change present condi- 
tions and shape a better future. We can never do 
this by constantly mourning over our situation. 
For such feelings waste our energies and prevent 
constructive processes of thought. 

Begin right now, to-day, my dear girl, to thank 
God for whatever has come to you; thank Him 
for trouble and sorrow; and ask Him to show 
you the way to transmute these things into a 
strong, helpful, character, and to give you the 
power to work up and out of all conditions which 
are distasteful to you. This is your work; and 
you alone can do it. Then look about you for 
things to rejoice over, and think and talk of 
these, and allow no one to be sorry for you. 

Stand before your mirror and laugh every day 
for five minutes; and when you feel the comers 
of your mouth turning down bring them up — and 
laugh again. 



62 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

And before very long you will discover that 
you are no longer to be pitied, but to be congratu- 
lated. 

For you will have made a new heaven and a 
new earth for yourself. 



XI 

PRENATAL INFLUENCE 

~-God loved so much, His thoughts burst into flame, 
And from that sacred Source creation came. 

THERE is nothing we cannot hope for for 
future generations once men and women are 
awakened to a reaHzation of what prenatal influ- 
ence means. 

Six or seven years ago a discouraged and trou- 
bled woman wrote to a friend of her misfortimes. 
The husband v/as out of employment, there were 
five children to feed and clothe and another child 
coming. 

''How can I be glad of this child or feel any- 
thing but despair at the thought of bringing an- 
other being into this troubled life?" she asked. 

*'How can I give my unborn offspring prenatal 
influences for anything but sorrow?" 

''Try," urged the friend, in reply. "Face the 
inevitable with a courage which shall compel the 
respect of the unseen presences always about us. 
Select some picture which pleases you and look 
upon it often, thinking you would like your child 
to resemble it. Select some character in history, 



64 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and then from your neighborhood Hbrary obtain 
books about that character, and read and think 
of the quahties which your child may acquire by 
your efforts. Focus your mind upon this subject. 
Whenever you become melancholy use your will 
power, and say to yourself that the Creator of all 
life is great and good enough to care for you and 
protect you through your trial, and that the work 
for you to do is to mold your child into a beau- 
tiful character and to fit it for a comfort and joy 
to yourself and himianity. You are building 
something which will mean good or evil for the 
world for time and eternity. You are bringing 
into existence a human being, 

''Such a colossal thought ought to take such 
complete possession of you that nothing petty, 
nothing gloomy, nothing selfish, nothing less than 
greatness and glory could enter your mind. 

''That child now under your heart has lived 
many times before on earth. It will come with 
many impulses and tendencies brought over from 
old incarnations, and many others from your own 
ancestors and those of the father. But greater 
than all these impulses and tendencies is the 
mind of the mother to mold and shape that 
child into what it will he. If you realize how won- 
derful is the work given to do, and how far- 
reaching will be the results of how you do it, a 
great awe will fall upon you, with a great exulta- 
tion. 

" You will fall on your knees and lift your face 



PRENATAL INFLUENCE 65 

to the Invisible Helpers, and cry out: * Creator, 
God, and all Holy Angels and Intelligences in 
the world and systems of worlds about and be- 
yond me, help me to be worthy of this mighty 
mission of motherhood with which I am charged. 
Thrill me, stir me, enhghten me with wisdom; 
give me light and guidance; and show me the 
way to give to the world a perfect child.'- 

"This prayer will be from the depths of your 
being, and it will be repeated every day, and you 
will fall asleep at night with the words on your 
lips. 

''Then you will guard yourself from all evil 
thinking or speaking, from gloomy or depressing 
thoughts; because you will know that one who 
so respects the mission intrusted to her and^who 
so believes in her great responsibility will be 
guarded and helped over all the hard places by 
the Divine Guides, who are ever about us. 

*'You will avoid looking at the ugly, the de- 
formed, or the repulsive things of earth. You 
will read no tales of crime and allow no one to 
talk such things to you, because you will not want 
to pass on to your unborn child anything but the 
beautiful, healthful, and inspiring things of life. 

*'You will read good books, biographies 
of noble lives, accounts of brave and noble 
deeds ; and you will listen to sweet music, and go 
into churches and galleries and see beautiful 
pictures, or walk in woods and fields and look at 
lovely nature. Andj always will there be the 



66 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

prayer and the faith in your heart that brings 
the Invisible Helpers near. You will believe 
that a Great Soul is coming to earth, through 
you, a soul that will be helpful and happy, and 
that will bring the best joy into your own life 
that it has ever known. And with all yoiu: heart 
and mind and mental and spiritual powers you 
will love this baby hidden away under your heart; 
and you will be brave and courageous and know 
that all must be well with you and it. For of 
such is the Kingdom of Heaven." 

Meantime the friend sent the burdened mother 
books and letters to cheer her and made such 
effort as was in her power to obtain work for the 
father and clothing and fuel for the family. 

Recently the friend received a letter from 
the mother saying what changes the years had 
brought to the family. The husband and father 
has a good position, and by careful economy 
they are able to satisfy the actual needs of the 
eight members of the household and to pay 
a small siim each week to liquidate their debts. 
And the baby which was the cause of such de- 
spondency and almost despair to the expectant 
mother is the glory and joy of the household. 
Already the child seems to radiate sunlight and 
hope and to show unusual beauty and attrac- 
tiveness. 

''Poor as we still are," the mother writes, ''my 
heart is full of joy all day long over our improved 
condition, and the control I learned to exercise 



PRENATAL INFLUENCE 67 

over my mind those months and tl 
learned of my abiHty to drive away rtieianchoiy 
and invite cheerfulness have been woi *^ '^^ ^^ ' 
cost me/' 

Time alone can tell just what will u^ me re- 
sult of the mother's concentrated effort to make 
her child an ideal character, but surely the present 
results are so gratifying to this mother that they 
should encourage thousands of other women simi- 
larly situated who read this little story. Every 
expectant mother should feel it her first great 
duty to control and guide her mind toward some 
desirable ideal, no matter how difficult her posi- 
tion may be. 

Every good thought and impulse, every kind 
feeling and sweet act cultivated, every unworthy 
mood and rebellious thought governed at such a 
time means a work done for eternity. A woman 
who has lived to see her son reflect every mood 
of her mental condition before his birth writes 
to-day that she feels her work in the future lies 
in giving talks to girls and women upon this all- 
important subject. 

*' Before my son was born," she writes, ''a 
relative asked me if I knew the power of mental 
prenatal influence. I had been reared by a 'mod- 
est' mother, one of the old-fashioned kind, who 
had taught me that to mention an unborn child 
was indelicate. Oh, the misfortune such mothers 
have entailed upon their children! I was indig- 
nant at the relative who referred to my condi- 



68 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

tion, and of coiirse lost an opportunity to benefit 
by her knowledge. Not until I lived to see my 
own uncontrolled moods reflected in my child, 
and to suffer for the injury I had done him when 
he was helpless to defend himself, did I awaken 
to the wonder and majesty and terror of prenatal 
conditions. 'And now I am going to do what 
I can to make other women realize their power 
to mold their children to be what they desire.'* 
This is a great work for any woman to under- 
take, and may success and joy attend her. 



XII 

THE NEGLECTED ART OP GOOD PARENTHOOD 

Love much. There is no waste in freely giving; 
He who loves much alone finds life worth living: 
Love on, through doubt and darkness; and believe 
There is no thing which Love may not achieve. 

Are you a parent of grown children? 
i\ If so, just what do you know of their methods 
of enjoyment outside the home, or even at home? 

Do you take a sympathetic interest in all their 
pleasures, and do you try to make them feel you 
are their friend, and that you have not forgotten 
your own youth? 

Are they on such happy terms with you that 
they tell you all their little secrets and talk over 
all their hopes and ambitions and longings ? Have 
you made your own son feel respect and a high 
sense of responsibility toward all women? Does 
he understand that sex relations are sacred mat- 
ters and that any light or low view of the subject 
is fraught with enormous dangers for him and for 
his descendants? Unless a young man knows 
this, from the scientific and medical side, he is 
not well equipped to go about seeking for social 



70 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

pleasures in safety. He is in danger himself, and 
he is liable to become a menace to those with 
whom he associates. 

Has your young daughter any knowledge of 
herself as a woman and a possible mother of an- 
other generation, which will protect her from dis- 
aster, morally or physically? Possibly, being your 
daughter, you feel she m.ust be safe from doing 
any foolish or wrong act. But you must remember 
how many other ancestors have given her ten- 
dencies and qualities and impulses of which you 
know nothing. 

First and forem_ost she is a human being, a part 
of nature, and she will pass through the same 
stages of development which flowers and plants 
and animals pass through. Just as the tree buds 
and then flowers and then bears fruit, so every 
normal woman experiences these instincts to carry 
on nature's work. But as she cannot perform 
these functions as naturally and frankly as the 
things in the vegetable and animal kingdom do, 
she needs guidance and protection through the 
romantic bud and flower periods of her unfold- 
ment. Tendencies which an unkind and undis- 
criminating world might call evil are simply nat- 
ural tendencies for mating and bearing offspring. 
They show themselves in romantic impulses and a 
desire to enjoy the society of the opposite sex. 

That desire should be gratified, but it should be 
guided and protected. Are you protecting your 
daughter? Do you know what hours she keeps 



THE ART OF GOOD PARENTHOOD 71 

with her callers; and when she visits her girl 
friends, do you know what places they visit and 
who are their escorts, and what hour she reaches 
her rooms? 

If you are the parents of small children, are you 
giving them any foundation of good manners and 
agreeable behavior and kindly instincts which 
will make them tractable students when they be- 
gin to attend school and will cause the tendrils 
of their young minds to reach up to lovely quali- 
ties, instead of trailing down into the dust of self- 
ishness and the mire of immorality? The most 
important duties of parenthood are often cast on 
the burdened shoulders of teachers. 

Having brought a child into the world and to 
a school age is not all of the responsibility of a 
father and mother. Not even w^hen accompanied 
by generosity and a willingness to pay teachers 
to do the work neglected at home. Nothing can 
ever quite recompense a child v/ho has reached 
the age of ten without having received the loving, 
careful training of a patient mother or father in the 
small, gracious things which make up daily conduct. 
- Any parent, hovvrever poor, can teach a child 
to speak low, to avoid flat contradictions, to be 
respectful to elders, to sit correctly, to partake 
of food silently, and enter and leave a room grace- 
fully. - 

Did you ever know how the story came to 
be told children that the stork brings the little 
brothers and sisters to the household? 



72 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

It seems that the stork is very much devoted 
to its young, and also most affectionate to its 
older progeny. 

In southern Europe and Egypt the storks are 
much loved and protected. They build their 
nests in chimneys or in old ruins or church spires. 
The Father Stork is devoted to his family and 
supplies food for the young in the nests, and he 
and Mother Stork are very careful to keep the 
birdies in their nests till they are quite strong 
enough to learn to fly. When they can safely fly, 
they start v/ith their parents to warmer lands. 
In Holland some people build nests on the house- 
tops to induce the storks to come. People would 
rather build a new chimney than disturb a stork's 
nest, as they are considered great good luck to 
have near; and, as almost all people in those lands 
think large families are a blessing, the belief grew 
up that having the devoted Stork parents build- 
ing nests on the roof brought them the happiness 
of a large family. 

'' Modest " parents declare they want to keep 
their children ''innocent'' and ignorant of all 
things pertaining to those subjects just as long as 
possible; and many a proud mother is heard de- 
claring her daughter of seventeen is as innocent 
as a babe unborn. 

But such innocence is criminal on the part of 
the parent. 

Besides, it is seldom true. 

The mother is deceived. 



THE ART OF GOOD PARENTHOOD 73 

Few children go through one primary term 
in pubHc school and remain ignorant of these 
subjects. But their knowledge is gained from 
low sources usually, and their minds are tarnished 
by having to receive the instruction in a vulgar 
or unwholesome manner. 

•^ It is the mother's place to talk to her children 
and to tell them just as many of life's great truths 
as their young minds can assimilate, and then 
to impress upon them the dignity and good form 
of silence on these subjects. When a mother 
makes her child a confidant in this way she wraps 
it about with a mantle of purity and protection 
which no rude hand can tear away. 

All the fathers and mothers in America who 
believe themselves to be in any way decent and 
respectable people continually deplore the preva- 
lence of graft, dishonesty, and every form of 
thievery in our land. And yet not one pair of 
parents in ten bring up little children with careful, 
high ideals respecting the rights and property of 
their neighbors and their associates. It is during 
the first ten years of a child's life that such ideals 
must be formed in order to become a part of the 
character. An especially bright, intellectual boy 
of ten years of age was heard commenting, with 
regret, on the dishonesty of American politics. 
He declared his opinion that all politicians were 
thieves, pocketing the money which belonged 
to the people for their own use. Yet the very 
same day this small boy had stopped by the road- 
6 



74 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

side and picked flowers from a garden which be- 
longed to a neighbor. 

He at first surveyed the ground with a watch- 
ful eye to see that no gardener was in sight; and 
he had glanced up at the windows of the mansion 
to assiire himself that no one was looking; then 
he hurriedly helped himself to a bouquet and 
passed on. 

To be sure, the garden was loaded with flowers, 
and those that he had gathered would never be 
missed. Nevertheless, he had violated a princi- 
ple; he had infringed upon the rights of others; he 
had taken property which did not belong to him. 

The only reproof administered by his mother 
when she learned of the fact was, ''Oh, you 
shouldn't have done that." Then she put the 
flowers in a vase and set them on the center-table. 
It was a childish act, she said. The sort of thing 
that every boy does some time in his life. Yet 
the act was petty larceny; nothing more and 
nothing less. Similar thefts occur in every neigh- 
borhood where there are fruit-trees. 

A man who has been most generous in the 
privileges he has granted neighbors, friends, and 
strangers in the use of the beautiful grounds 
surroimding his summer home planted a few 
cherry-trees some years ago, thinking it would 
be a pleasure to eat cherries from his own trees. 
So far he has been denied that privilege because 
his neighbors' children have helped themselves to 
the cherries before they were fairly ripe. They 



THE ART OF GOOD PARENTHOOD 75 

have not done this openly nor in the presence of 
the owner; they have sought occasions when 
they thought no one was looking, and they fled 
from the premises as soon as observed; yet their 
parents consider this mere ''childish mischief,'' 
and do not see that if calls for any serious con- 
sideration. But this is a species of vandalism 
and trains the mind of a child to wrong ideas re- 
garding the rights of others. 

The same child would probably be ashamed 
to enter his neighbor's house and steal cherries 
from the pantry shelf; but flowers and fruit 
growing on the property of a neighbor are just as 
much his own as though they had been plucked 
and carried indoors. 

These fine distinctions of what constitutes 
honesty, refinement, and good breeding should be 
taught by every father and mother who desires 
children to become desirable citizens of the United 
States. They should become a part of the teach- 
ing of every public school, ^t is much more im- 
portant that children should be impressed with 
these principles of high honesty and fine breeding 
than that they should be taught drawing, anatomy, 
or Latin. We will never have cleaner politics 
or fewer criminals and law-breakers in the land 
until we have more parents and more teachers 
who make it a business to impress upon the minds 
of little children the necessity to consider the 
rights of others in the small daily matters of 
life. 



76 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

A peddler of cakes and condiments found his 
cart nearly empty. As he emerged from a house 
where he had been delivering packages a bevy of 
screaming youths, under fifteen years of age, ran 
out of reach, laughing at his look of consterna- 
tion. They were children of respectable, church- 
going residents of the little suburban resort. It 
seemed to them an excellent jest to steal the man's 
cakes and cookies and feast upon them while his 
back was turned. 

A child's mind should be formed to regard other 
people's property with respect before it reaches 
six years of age. This can be done by daily 
chats and pleasant conversation of the parents, 
fashioned to the understanding of the child. 
Little boys can be made to consider another 
boy's marbles and tin soldiers as personal prop- 
erty, not to be used or touched without the own- 
er's permission and knowledge, and never to be 
marred or injured. 

Little girls can be made to regard other chil- 
dren's dolls and toys in the same light. The im- 
pression should be indelibly fixed upon the deli- 
cate mind texture that any violation of this rule 
is vulgar and indicates lack of good breeding. 
Children so taught by tactful and considerate 
parents will never become thieves, and will never 
be guilty of petty purloinings of neighbors' flow- 
ers and fruits. 

Day-schools and Sunday-schools may profitably 
employ a few moments three times each month 



THE ART OF GOOD PARENTHOOD 77 

at least to direct young minds to high, fine ideals 
in these small matters. It will save work and ex- 
pense for courts of justice in years to come. And 
it will make the world a sweeter and more com- 
fortable place for growing generations. 



XIII 

THE TOWER ROOM 

And I have looked up through the veil of skies 
When all the world was still and understood 
That I am one with Nature and with God. 

ARE you living up to the best there is in you? 
i\ Are you even living up to one-half of that 
best? 

Each one of us is a mansion. Each one of us 
is a mansion with its different stories, its ground 
floor, its upper rooms, and its tower. We must 
live many hours on the ground floor. We have 
our practical duties, our needs of the body, our 
daily cares which require our presence in the lower 
room. 

Nearly all of us spend hours in the upper cham- 
bers, where we find repose and relaxation, but how 
many of us go every day into the tower room? 
How many of us, indeed, know, or, knowing, re- 
member that we possess this tower room? 

The ground-floor room is that mental condition 
which obliges us to think wholly of the needs of 
the body; the upper chambers are those moments 
or hours when we enjoy the pleasures and com- 



THE TOWER ROOM 79 

forts of earth without anxiety or sordid cares; 
and the tower room is that exalted state of mind 
wherein we feel onr close kinship to the Supreme 
Cause and to the Invisible Helpers of the universe. 

Just a brief time spent in that room of your 
being each day will help you to peace, power, and 
prosperity. It will help you to grow in strength, 
health, usefulness, and happiness. If you have 
never entered this room you cannot reach it all 
at once. You will have to climb patiently to it. 
Many people belong to a church and believe in a 
creed and in heaven, yet have never entered the 
tower room in their own being. 

Have you? 

There are some things we know better to-day 
than any one knew a thousand or fifty years ago. 
Other things were known better a thousand and 
five thousand years ago than we know them. 

Concentration was one of these things. The 
tendency of modern times is to scatter our mind 
forces — ^and to render us irritable, resentful, and 
ill-tempered. Here is a little formula which will 
help us all in our search for control, composure, 
and concentration. Sit in a quiet room, in a com- 
fortable chair, erect, with the hands resting lightly 
on the knees. 

Close the eyes, inhale a deep breath through 
the nostrils until counting seven, hold the breath 
while counting the same, and slowly exhale the 
same length of time. Think, as you do this, that 
you are taking in from God's universe good 



8o THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

health, good^will, success, happiness, and useful- 
ness, and making them your own. Do this for five 
minutes only, morning and night, and see if your 
nerves do not come more under your control 
and the task of keeping amiable does not grow 
less difficult. 

Of course you will not become perfect in a day, 
week, or year. You will have your ups and downs, 
your setbacks and your discouragements. But 
you will be helped and benefited by this simple 
exercise in a surprising degree. 

Try it. 

It is good for every human being on earth to 
breathe deeply and fill the whole body with pure, 
fresh air many times a day. It is good for every 
living thing to love and be loved. It is good for 
all human beings to live outdoors as much as pos- 
sible and to stand and walk correctly. 

There is no one so peculiarly constructed that 
he will not be benefited by these things; there 
is no one who will not be harmed by an opposite 
course; and there is no one who has a sorrow or a 
trouble so individual or special who will not be 
harmed by constant conversation about it or 
who will not be helped by the right attitude of 
mind toward this subject. 

Science has proven that there is a physical 
change made in the brain-cells by each thought. 
Even a momentary sight of colors has produced 
an effect upon the color cells of an animal. 

Imagine, then, what continual thought of any 



THE TOWER ROOM 8i 

kind must be doing for our own brains. Anger, 
revenge, fear, sorrow, despondency, worry, and 
melancholy are all little chisels chipping away 
at the physical structure of otrr heads, as well 
as changing the expressions of our faces, the atti- 
tudes of our bodies, and the chemicals of our men- 
tal atmosphere. 

The woman who writes long, melancholy let- 
ters recounting the wrongs and troubles she has 
borne is shaping her brain to new sorrows and 
robbing herself of the power of concentration 
and of the vital force she needs to produce other 
and happier events. For events are greatly of 
our own molding, and many things which seem 
inevitable accidents are only the result of mental 
currents. 

It is a curious thing how the body and mind 
react one on the other. If you sit before the mir- 
ror and frown for ten minutes you will begin to 
feel cross. If you sit and smile you will soon feel 
your heart growing merry. Train your body and 
your face to be alert, hopeful, and energetic, and 
luck will come to you ten times where it would 
come once to the despondent and drooping-vis- 
aged mortal. 

I was told of a yoimg girl who came to New 
York to find work and who had the most remark- 
able rtm of good fortune befall her. Her first 
effort was successful, and she left that position 
to fill another that offered twice the salary. 

''Bom to luck," a friend said to me. 



82 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

Afterward I met the girl. She came on an er- 
rand. It was a day of rain and wind, but she 
blew into the room like a sunbeam and a summer 
breeze in one. She walked as if there were springs 
under her soles. She radiated light and cheer. 
She went directly to the object of her visit, made 
her errand known in a few concise, clearly spoken 
words, and went away, leaving me with the feeling 
that some vital part of the world's mechanism 
had passed before me. No wonder she is lucky, 
for her luck lies in herself. 

If we are not born with it, let us cultivate it. 
We can. 

And he who climbs daily to the Tower Room 
of his mind will surely one day sight the incoming 
Ship of Success, bearing to him in its hold all the 
highest and best dreams of his heart materialized. 



XIV 



LOVE 



*Tis love, not creeds, that from a low condition 
Leads mankind up to heights supreme and grand. 
Oh, that the world could see and understand! 

THE ideas of love between the sexes are 
changing with other conditions. According 
to one authority, romantic love between man and 
woman first came into the world with Dante's 
love for Beatrice. Before that period gallantry 
had existed; but only the gallantry of the male, 
who tries to attract the female — a purely sex 
impulse devoid of real romance and high senti- 
ment. 

In the Middle Ages and the days of the Chris- 
tian Fathers woman was considered the author 
of all evil. She was even called *' the door of hell.'' 
She was told she must live in continual penance 
on account of having brought sin into the world. 

In the sixth century woman was forbidden to 
receive the Eucharist in the naked hand because 
of her impurity. 

No Oriental religion ever reduced woman to 



84 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

such degradation as did the fanaticism of these 
early Christian Fathers. 

Here are some proverbs about women which 
men made popular in that era: 

''Wom.en and horses must be beaten." 
** Women and money are the causes of all evils. '* 
'* Trust no woman even were she dead." 
/'If you are too happy, take a wife." 
Montaigne recommended poetry to women be- 
cause ''it is a wanton, crafty art, disguised all 
for pleasure, all for show, just as they are." 

John Stuart Mill once said in reference to those 
times: 

"Some generations ago, when satires on women 
were in vogue, men thought it clever to insult 
women for being what men had made them." 

The world has grown away from such ideas of 
women; and, with other changes, its viewpoint 
on what constitutes love has changed. Where 
once woman was supposed to be man's absolute 
chattel, she is now regarded as his c-'^mrade, mate, 
friend, and equal; and comradeship rather than 
service is demanded of her. 

This question is propounded: "What is the 
highest form of woman's love for man?" 

The question is at once simple and complex. 
Not every woman is endowed with the qualities 
which enable her to be a loveress. Not every 
woman so endowed meets the one capable of in- 
spiring her. Not every woman who loves deeply 
possesses the spiritual and mental traits which 



LOVE 85 

alone render that love a blessing and a power for 
good to the recipient. There are women whose 
love blights and ruins. There are others whom to 
love or be loved by brings forth the latent powers 
in a man's nature and speeds him to the summits. 

The highest form of love in a woman is that 
which ennobles not only the man who receives it, 
but her who gives it. 

^ I have more than once seen a woman belittled 
and cheapened by a spaniel-like devotion to a man 
who was unworthy of the sentiment bestowed 
upon him and who was wearied by it. Such love 
is pitiful and holds no element of grandeur. It 
is merely one form of hysterics, and ought to come 
under the head of nervous diseases. 

A great love, ''the highest form of love," must 
contain a large element of womanly self-respect, 
and must dignify the giver as well as the recipient, 
even in its most extravagant phases. 

It must to some degree absorb all other loves 
and make thp^n secondary; yet if it renders the 
heart, which is its home, cruel to every living 
thing or blind to any duty, it ceases to be the 
** highest form of love." 

Ph^drus tells of a woman who loved her hus- 
band so much that in comparison father and 
mother seemed like strangers. This wife was 
Alcestis, the daughter of Pelius. She cheerfully 
laid down her life for her husband, and the gods 
accorded her the rare virtue of returning to earth 
when she felt like it. 



86 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

It is qmte possible that these parents deserved to 
seem Hke strangers to their daughter. 'Parental 
affection is not infrequently a most selfish senti- 
ment, and one which in no sense includes the high- 
est good for the children: To the majority of 
fathers and mothers the inner life of their off- 
spring is as unknown as the Sanskrit language. 

A mere tie of blood cannot force us to love what 
is unlovable. 

If Alcestis passed from the home where the 
average domestic conditions exist into the full 
effulgence of a real love life, it is no wonder her 
parents seemed strangers to her. But if her new- 
found happiness caused her to ignore their feel- 
ings or to disregard a properly courteous and 
thoughtful code of conduct toward them, then it 
was not the ''highest type of love.'' 

To love truly, absorbingly, and passionately 
any one human being ought to make us more 
considerate and tender toward all himianity; 
just as the sunlight penetrates into dark recesses 
and warms and blesses every leaf and blade of 
grass, so a great love should cast its radiations 
upon all who come within its aura. 

Our sympathies, our benevolence, our affec- 
tions should all be deepened and widened by the 
presence of the great awakener in our hearts. A 
woman's faith in the man she loves shotild be 
firm and patient, yet it should not be blind. 

It should expect results. It should not be satis- 
fied to see him degenerate into selfishness, greedi- 



LOVE 87 

ness, or immorality and make no protest or give 
no warning. 

It should be a spur to his best nature, to his 
highest impulses. 

Unless a man improves under the influence of 
a woman's love there is something wrong with 
her love or the man. 

Every himian being either improves or degener- 
ates as years pass by. To the unprejudiced eye 
these subtle changes are visible year by year. 
There is no such thing as remaining stationary, 
mentally, morally, or phyvSically. 

A man may lose fortune and position, yet grow 
into a finer and more admirable manhood through 
the experience. He may gain wealth and at the 
same time lose or gain in moral worth, and these 
changes should be first visible to the eyes of the 
woman who loves him. 

The highest type of love is not blind. It has 
the good of its object too near its heart to be 
blind to the changes which encompass it. 

*' Patient Griselda'' was not a noble type of 
loving woman.- She encouraged the brute and the 
tyrant in the man and allowed him to lower him- 
self in the moral scale. 

When a man says of a woman, *'No matter 
what I do, she will say it is all right,'' be sure that 
woman is not giving the highest type of love. 
What a man ought to be able to say is: *'No 
matter how appearances are against me, she will 
believe in me until I can explain to her, and if I 



88 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

make a mistake she will be the first to encourage 
me to begin anew and the qmckest to forgive/' 
No woman who loves utterly would think it a 
great sacrifice to give up her life for her lover 
were it necessary. Love is immortal and has 
no fear of death. 

A perfect love must include spiritual sympathy, 
mental companionship, physical responsiveness. 
Any one of these elements lacking, love is crippled. 
Here is what Henry T. Finck has to say of Ro- 
mantic love: 

*'0f all the rhetorical commonplaces in litera- 
ture and conversation none is more frequently 
repeated than the assertion that love as depicted 
in a thousand novels and poems every year has 
existed at all times and in every country, immu- 
table as the mountains and the stars, but romantic 
love is a modern sentiment less than a thousand 
years old. 

''Not till Dante's Vita Nuova appeared was 
the gospel of modern love — the romantic adora- 
tion of a maiden by a youth — revealed for the 
first time in definite language. Genius, however, 
is always in advance of its age, in emotions as 
well as in thoughts, and the feelings experienced 
by Dante were obviously not shared by his con- 
temporaries, who found them too subtle and sub- 
limated for their comprehension. And, in fact, 
they were too ethereal to quite correspond with 
reality. The strings of Dante's lyre were strung 
too high and, touched by his magic hand, gave 



LOVE 89 

forth harmonic overtones too celestial for mun- 
dane ears to hear." — Romantic Love and Personal 
Beauty, 

This curious and interesting book, which deals 
with all phases and attributes of love, has nothing 
whatever to say of Platonic love. 

There is wholesome, sincere friendship between 
man and woman. It is in no sense Platonic love. 
The moment we use the word love we speak of 
a claim, a necessity. The element of love enter- 
ing into our affection, we find the object necessary 
to our happiness. 

When a man becomes in any way necessary 
to a woman, or a woman to a man, the tie is no 
longer mere ''friendship,'' nor can any trumped- 
up makeshift of ''Platonism'' disguise its real 
nature. When any human being becomes a part 
of your plans for pleasure or happiness each day 
or each week or each month, there is danger 
ahead for you if that being is of the opposite sex 
and not related to you by blood ties. 

Wreathe it over as you will with flowery talk 
of Platonic love, nevertheless you are marching 
to the chasm of dangerous experiment. You may 
as well carry a lighted match into a dynamite 
factory and say you are safe. A man's house- 
keeper or secretary may be necessary to his com- 
fort or to the successful accomplishment of his 
business. He may say, ''I could not get along 
without her." But that is another question. 

It is when the social and holiday side of the 
7 



90 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

man's nature feels the necessity of some one 
woman to share his enjoyment that he needs to 
be on his guard if he wishes to avoid giving or 
receiving pain or finding himself in some sort of 
trouble. 

It has been said: ''There are two great prob- 
lems of life — the problem of sex and the problem 
of God. It is hard to say which is the more 
tormenting; it is enough that each is a whirling 
maelstrom." 

But in the problem of God we can always fall 
back on the consciousness that Love and progress 
cover the whole question, while in the problem 
of sex, love is only the higher phase, and before 
we climb to it we are in danger of stimibling into 
the mire below if we are not eternally on guard. 



XV 

THOUGHT-NAILS 

Though desolate 
The way may seem, command thy fate, 
Send forth thy thought, achieve, achieve! 

RISE above fear. Do not be a slave to the 
. fear of poverty, the fear of sickness, the 
fear of sudden disaster or death. Though the 
earth may quake, and the floods rise, and the 
cyclone blow, and the lightnings glare, and the 
flames rage, let your spirit keep its calm. It is 
eternal, and nothing can harm it. 

Do not spoil days of peace and serenity and 
comfort by continual fear of things which may 
never happen; for if they do happen the energy 
of your mind will be needed to meet and conquer 
them. Fear is a rat in the wall, undermining 
energy and courage and strength. 

Were you to see a carpenter with a barrel of 
nails building a house, and if you knew he could 
have only that one barrel of nails, and that the 
house must be completed at a certain period of 
time, would you not think the man a fool if you 
saw him throwing the nails one by one into the 



92 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

sand or the ocean or the flames? Every thought 
we send out is a nail in the construction of Char- 
acter, that mansion we are sent to this earth-plane 
to build. To use these thought -nails in fear, 
worry, despondency, gloom, hatred, resentment, 
and doubt of God and ourselves is as foolish and 
wicked as would be the waste of nails by the car- 
penter who had contracted to build the house 
made by hands. 

Never before in the last century had America 
such need of knowledge of the power of the mind 
to control circumstances as now. Never was there 
a greater demand for the exercise of self-control 
and self-assertion. There was never a time when 
those who believe in prophecies had greater need 
of balance and common sense mixed with this 
belief. There is no question but many people 
possess the sixth sense which enables them to see 
some approaching events. But few, very few, 
possess the knowledge of the time such events 
will transpire. 

Therefore it is unwise to be one of those *'who, 
through fear of death, live always in bondage,'' 
and who by continual fear of calamity bring it 
nearer. 

There is an invisible world about us in which 
events which occur here are formulated; and there 
are eyes on earth which see those events in the 
process. In centuries to come all htiman beings 
will possess this sixth sense. But not all who pre- 
tend to possess it are to be trusted. And how- 



THOUGHT-NAILS 93 

ever true may be the prophet who foretells your 
future at the time of the telling, remember you 
are a part of destiny, and you can modify events 
and turn disasters into blessings by your mental 
attitude. 

This you cannot do if your mind is full of fear. 

Fear is a devil of man's own making; have 
nothing to do with him and he will leave you. 
Entertain him and he will destroy you. 

However scientific may be the causes on which 
some prophet bases his assertion that a great 
disaster hangs over your locality or yourself, be- 
gin each day with an assertion of trust in the 
Creator of all things. Then clear your mind of all 
despondency, all hate, and all revenge. Forgive 
everybody who has wronged you and saturate 
your heart with the thought, ''I am surrounded 
by a circle of Divine Love, and nothing but good 
can come to me/' 

If you find fear and gloom approaching the 
citadel of your mind during the day, say: '*I was 
placed on earth to make the most of my oppor- 
tunities. I am here for a good purpose, or I would 
not be here. Whatever occurs, it is my part to 
be calm, trustful, and helpful." When you hear 
people talking of flood and earthquake and war 
and pestilence, fill your mind with sunshine, se- 
renity, peace, and health. 

If you do this persistently and systematically 
you will, in the event that any of these disasters 
come, find yourself a rock of safety for others, 



94 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and you wiU be protected by seemingly miracu- 
lous circumstances in the midst of peril. 

Most of us shelter some pet fear in owe hearts. 
Many of us give room, rent free, to a whole brood 
of fears. The old orthodox religion of our early 
Christian Fathers was built on fear. The Puri- 
tans loved the fear of God more than they loved 
the love of God or humanity. 

A more wholesome creed is taught in our day; 
even the churches are beginning to teach love 
in place of fear. 

The New Thought philosophy makes fear the 
only devil. Yet even those who know the fool- 
ishness and danger of entertaining fear find it 
difficult to exile the demon from their hearts and 
minds so absolutely that it cannot find some win- 
dow left open through which it may creep in and 
curl up in one comer. 

The fear of poverty, when it becomes a settled 
thought, is classed as insanity by brain specialists. 
Many men of wealth die in misery, victims of 
this mania. Fear of being shghted or injured by 
others, when indulged and dw^elt upon, becomes 
another form of insanity called paranoea. Fear 
of misfortune and bad luck caused a successful 
and healthy man to commit suicide recently be- 
cause he found the ship on which he had taken 
passage for Europe was to sail on the thirteenth 
of the month. So deeply rooted had become 
his superstitious fear of the date that he lost his 
reason. 



THOUGHT-NAILS 95 

Fear of death caused a man who was challenged 
to a duel to kill himself before the hour set for 
the duel arrived. Fear of sickness sends many a 
man and woman to the sanitarium and many 
others to the grave. 

Yet how to rid our minds of these fears, or 
others like them, is ofttimes a serious problem. 
The mind that has long entertained fear becomes 
weakened, and is seemingly unable, alone and 
unassisted, to drive out the enemy to peace and 
happiness. 

Then is the time when an appeal to the Higher 
Forces, to the ''Invisible Helpers," will bring its 
sure response. 

Go alone to your best-loved room, or to any 
spot where you can be sure of silence and seclusion. 
Sit quietly and breathe deeply, until your nerves 
are calmed; then lift your whole nature in an ear- 
nest appeal to the ''Great Friends," the "Invisible 
Helpers," to come to your aid. Ask them to take 
away fear from your heart and to replace it with 
infinite trust, absolute faith, joy unspeakable. 

After you have made this appeal, assert that 
peace, happiness, and trust are yours. Say to your 
subjective mind, when you are falling asleep, "I 
am taking my thinking, objective mind to the 
land of sleep; I leave you in charge. Fill my 
being with serenity, confidence in God, and in 
myself, drive away fear and despondency." 

Then make your little assertion the very last 
conscious moment, "I am encircled by the arms 



96 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

of Divine Love, and nothing but good can come 
to me." 

You will waken with a new sense of security 
and strength in the morning. If during the day 
old fear tries to creep in, make your good-night 
assertion again and refuse to think of fear-in- 
spiring things. Recall to yourself the innumer- 
able times when fears which you have entertained 
in the past proved to be nothing but the result 
of your own imagination. 

If you are inclined to question the existence of 
Angel Helpers, or Invisible Friends, rest on the 
fact that there can be produced a mighty army 
of brilliant and sane souls who have proven these 
things to their own satisfaction; and that the 
greatest achievements in the history of the world 
have been accomplished by men and women who 
believed in Spiritual Intelligences and their power 
to aid mankind. 

These intelligences, these helpers, do exist; and 
they will bring you into the kingdom of your own 
soul and drive away fear if you ask their assist- 
ance. But after it is given, and while you are 
asking, you m^ust help yourself by practical and 
persistent methods. Their work is to help those 
who help themselves; not to do your work for 
you. 

Peace, Power, and Plenty belong to you. Claim 
your own. 



XVI 

A MENTAL INVENTORY 

When life gives 
The burden of a duty, difficult 
And hard to carry, then rejoice, O Soul, 
And know thyself one chosen for high things. 

WHAT have you accomplished this year? 
I mean, what have you accomphshed that 
will last? 

You may have made money, or gained a social 
foothold, or created a role in the dramatic world, 
or written a book or play or opera; you may 
have traveled and received adulation from foreign 
lands, but that is not what I mean. 

Not one of these things will last. They all 
pass away with time. Money, fame, beauty, pow- 
er, all pass away. 

Character only remains. What have you done 
toward building your character? 

Sit down alone by yourself in a quiet room and 
turn the lights low and think it over. 

Have you grown stronger in any worthy prin- 
ciple? Have you exercised self-control in your 
appetites? Is it easier or harder for you to resist 



98 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

taking ''a drink" when you know it is not good 
for you; or to decline food that you are con- 
scious disagrees with you and leaves unpleasant 
effects afterward? 

It is either easier or more difficult; we never 
stand still. You are certainly a bit stronger or a 
bit weaker in your will power than you were a 
year ago to-day. 

Which is it? 

Have you gained anything intellectually in 
this year? Do you know more in any desirable 
line of study or research? Or has your brain been 
frittered away on the daily news and light fiction, 
and things which have done you no good more 
than to pass away time? Have you stored up 
one historical fact or scientific piece of informa- 
tion that will help you, or have you thought seri- 
ously on any topic which developed your brain 
powers? Have you made any progress in any 
art, profession, or accomplishment? 

Have you cultivated self-denial for the sake 
of others; have you restrained yourself in selfish 
pleasures and habits now and then, that you 
might give more time and pleasure to some one 
near you — a parent, a child, a husband, a wife? 

Have you thought a little about the life to come ? 
The years are hurrying by; ahead lies the path 
that we must all take alone one of these days. 
Have you given a little thought to where that 
path leads? 

There is nothing of material possessions or 



A MENTAL INVENTORY 99 

achievements you can take with you. Only the 
worth-while pleasures and the unselfish deeds 
and the best thoughts can accompany us on 
that last journey. 

Have you tried to inform your mind on the part 
your thoughts play in building your body here, 
and your place and plane in the life after? It is 
an interesting study and will pay you for the time 
you give to it. 

Have you grown stronger or weaker physically 
this last year? If weaker, what is the cause? 
Not hard work; for work harms no man if he 
lives, breathes, thinks, and eats properly. If 
you are weaker you have violated some common- 
sense law. You have failed to use all your lung- 
cells every day; you have overloaded your sys- 
tem with food which did it no good; and you 
have worried and been despondent. Any and 
all these things break down the health. But 
whatever you have failed to do this year can be 
done next year. Only we must first be conscious 
of our failures before we can remedy them. 

So take your hour alone to-day and think it 
all over. Balance up your books and start 
right to-morrow. Every day begins a new 
year. 

Many a man will no doubt reckon his success 
in business as the only achievement necessary 
to jot down in his ledger. He has made liioney; 
he has enabled his wife to dress ¥/ell; he has sent 
his children to fashionable schools; he has a new 



loo THE ART OF BEING ALIVE • 

motor-car, or several new motors, and feels that 
his year is a great triumph. 

Some woman may be quite satisfied with hav- 
ing made sacrifices for her children; she has 
toiled for them; she has dressed plainly that they 
might dress well; and she has been in every pos- 
sible way a help to her husband in the economical 
method of using his income for the best interests 
of the family. 

But what, dear sir or madam, has been your 
daily deportment in your home or in your busi- 
ness? Your money is not the important thing 
to consider at this time of year. It is your 
character. What progress have you made in^ 
the last year toward developing an admirable 
and lovable disposition? What sort of memories 
are you storing up for those nearest to you — 
wife, husband, children, or business associates? 

They may outlive you, and how will they re- 
member you? 

' Are you doing by them exactly as you would 
like to be done by? That is not a new idea, but 
it is quite as well worth your consideration as if 
it were. You may be a busy man, weighed down 
with matters of political or business importance, 
and you will think my question a trivial one, per- 
haps. But nothing on earth is of more importance 
than doing right by our daily associates. Nothing 
here or hereafter can atone for our neglect to 
bring out the best in those nearest us. 

If you are cold, irritable, indifferent, nagging, 



A MENTAL INVENTORY loi 

selfish, stingy, or thoughtless in yotir home or 
your office or shop, you are bringing out the worst 
— not the best — qualities in others. You are 
spoiling beautiful days, weeks, and months for 
others, and that is more criminal than spoiling 
their property; the time-despoiler, the happiness- 
slayer is the most cruel vandal on earth. 

Besides wronging others, you are ruining your- 
self in the recollection of those who outlive you. 

If you are devoting your whole time and 
strength to making money for your wife and chil- 
dren, or if you, as their mother, are sacrificing 
pleasure and youth to give them advantages, 
do not imagine you are doing all that is required 
of you. To be agreeable, to be patient, to be 
companionable — those are the qualities which 
help to make life worth living for those near us. 
It is a tragedy to spoil one day for another human 
being by a lack of these qualities, even though 
we bestow a fortune upon that being when we 
pass on. 

It is a tragedy to be remembered as an un- 
comfortable and unamiable person, even of large 
virtues. 

How do you imagine those about you will re- 
member you when you are gone? 



XVII 

THE SMALL TOWN 

Along this world benighted 

Where clouds and shadows roll, 
One narrow path is lighted 

For each immortal soul. 
The path of Love's endeavor 

To show the God within, 
And who walks there will never 

Be slave of fear or sin. 

DO not let yoiir minds narrow down to the 
limits of yonr town; do not let yoiir ideas 
become dwarfed, your ambitions stunted, your 
outlook limited. There is no need of it in this day 
and age of low-priced literature and free libraries. 

You can keep in mental touch with the whole 
world if you wish to do it. There is no need of 
confining yotir information to the social column 
of your country paper. Read the magazines and 
weeklies and book reviews when you cannot ob- 
tain the books. Think of yourself as an important 
factor in the world — ^not merely of your town or 
church. Try and be broad and large in your out- 
look. 

The moment you find yourself dwelling on 



THE SMALL TOWN 103 

thoughts of neighborhood gossip and petty scan- 
als turn your back on your lesser self and search 
for your real self — the noble, great-hearted being 
you were destined to be. Read history and medi- 
tate upon the lives of great men and women. 
When you are about to pass Mary Jones by with- 
out speaking to her because you heard some one 
'had suspected her of questionable conduct, stop 
and think of Joan of Arc, Mme. Roland, Father Da- 
mien, Nathan Hale, Abraham Lincoln, or a hundred 
other colossal figures you can call to mind. They 
will scare away all petty prejudices and make you 
ashamed of yourself. Think of our Pilgrim fa- 
thers and mothers and all the wonderful strength 
of character it required to live their lives in those 
dangerous and difficult times. It will make your 
own cares and troubles seem trivial. Avoid 
judging htmianity from the standards set up in 
your town. Be liberal, and remember that cli- 
mate and environment have much to do with 
people's ideas of behavior. Try and cultivate 
a loving interest in your associates. 

It is a strange fact that in small towns so little 
affection or love exists among the inhabitants. 
One would think it sure to be found in the quiet 
country hamlets, where the few people are de- 
pendent upon one another for enjoyment. But 
instead we find jealousy, criticism, and indiffer- 
ence prevailing in such places. I have lived in 
the lonely country farming town, in the small 
hamlet, and in the crowded cities, and I must con- 



I04 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

fess that it is in the latter I have found greater 
and more spontaneous affection and readier S3nii- 
pathy among people, together with broader judg- 
ments. In the average country hamlet one needs 
to be ill or an object of charity to bring out the 
tenderness in the hearts of his neighbors. Let 
it be known that sickness or poverty has visited 
a household, and the tongue of gossip is silenced 
and the indifferent or disagreeable air gives place 
to solicitous kindness — while the trouble lasts! 
But, remember, we cannot all in this world be in- 
valids or beggars. Yet we all love sympathy and 
companionship and appreciation. 

Many women in the country love to play Lady 
Boimtiful merely for the gratification of being 
looked up to. But a greater nature finds pleas- 
ure in showing affectionate interest in an equal on 
whom it can bestow nothing but friendship. 
Think every day how large the world is com- 
pared to your town, yet do not despise your 
town in consequence. Respect it as part of the 
great Consolidated Company of Human Beings, 
and make it as interesting a place as possible 
by your own mental, moral, and social qual- 
ities. 

Study, think, read, work, and love. Sympathize 
with your neighbors' aims, ambitions, efforts, 
hopes, and trials. Cheer them all you can, and 
never allow a thought of jealousy or envy to enter 
your mind if some one seems to you to be suc- 
ceeding better than you or yours. 



THE SMALL TOWN 105 

Do not permit yourself to be smaU and petty 
because you live in a small town. ^Be so large 
of soul that you will dignify the town in the mind 
of any one who knows it is your place of residence/' 



XVIII 

WHAT IS ''charm''? 

Oh, a great world, a fair world, a true world I find it: 
A sun that never forgets to rise, 
On the darkest night a star in the skies, 

And a God of love behind it. 

THE French women confess that the American 
women are handsome, well dressed, enter- 
taining, and brilliant, but this is their criticism: 

*'The American woman has no charm/' 

It was an American woman who told me. of 
hearing this remark made many times in Paris. 

''Now, what do they mean by charm?" she 
asked. 

You might as well ask what is meant by saying 
a flower has no perfimie. Charms in a woman, 
is as subtle a thing as perftime in a flower. It 
does not pertain to personal appearance; it does 
not pertain to accomplishments; it does not per- 
tain to manner, education, dress, or conversation, 
yet it permeates all these. And without it all of 
these are rendered meaningless. 

A woman may be fascinating without being 
charming. She may fascinate with smiles and 



WHAT IS ^XHARM''? 107 

coquetries, which we know are insincere, but 
which nevertheless hold us in a spell. The 
charming woman is almost always an tmselfish 
woman. She forgets herself when she is in the 
presence of others, or shall I say that she remem- 
bers herself and her duty to he agreeable. Perhaps 
it is this higher consciousness of self — the better 
self — which makes a large portion of charm of 
manner. 

The charming woman never allows the conver- 
sation to dwell long upon herself, and she never 
monopolizes the conversation. She leads others 
to talk, and is interested in what others say and 
do. She is always tactful. She avoids the top- 
ics that are distasteful to others and introduces 
those which will be agreeable. The charming 
woman usually possesses a certain amount of 
feminine vanity: she likes to please, not only 
to please the mind and the heart, but the eye. 

She usually dresses becomingly and takes ex- 
cellent care of her person, so that she exhales an 
atmosphere of beauty, even if she possesses no 
absolute beauty of face or form. 

The woman famed for her beauty is rarely 
charming, because she has been so spoiled and 
flattered from the cradle up that her heart is al- 
most always devoid of the sympathy which must 
form a strong part of charm. When a beautiful 
woman is unselfish and sympathetic and loving, 
her charm usually becomes historic. 

It was said that Madame Recamier was as 



io8 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

beloved by her own sex as she was admired by 
the opposite. She was goodness and charm per- 
sonified, as well as beauty. A woman friend said 
of her once: ''First of all she is good; then she 
is brilliant; then she is beautiful." 

Ninon de L'Enclos, who was not **good" like 
Recamier, was charming. In spite of her free and 
easy morals, she left the impression of great charm 
upon the world. Her moral derelictions are for- 
gotten in her charm. She v/as kindness itself to 
other women, and to the age of eighty-four re- 
tained her hold upon the affections of both sexes. 

Charm must spring from an affectionate nature 
and from a heart which desires to give pleasiire 
rather than to be admired. But the charming 
woman usually receives more admiration than 
the professional beauty, the great genius, or the 
most brilliant of her sex who do not possess charm. 
Of all compliments a woman can receive, the 
greatest is to be called *' charming'' when ** good- 
ness'' is added. 



XIX 

KEEP STILL 

Would you believe in Presences Unseen — 

In life beyond this earthly life? 

Be still; 

Be stiller yet; and listen. 

WHAT is your morning conversation? 
Are you telling each member of the family 
how poorly you slept, what nightmares disturbed 
you, how wakeful you were, and what a tempera- 
ture you have? 

Are you disturbing the peace and comfort of 
those about you with talk of nerves and headaches ? 

Then you are committing a sin against God and 
humanity. You are defiling the atmosphere with 
mental emanations of disease and nervousness 
and creating discord for yourself and others. I 
have seen a whole family's happiness for the day 
destroyed by one hysterical woman who insisted 
on having every one feel her pulse and note its 
rapid beat, while she recounted all the causes 
which had led to her delicate nervous condition. 

Meantime she was devoutly religious and be- 
lieved it was God's will she should suffer. But 



no THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

was it ''God's will" she shoiild make every one 
in her vicinity suffer? God has nothing to do 
with suffering and disease. He never made it. 
He made Love, Health, opportimities for happi- 
ness. In each soul He put His own divine quali- 
ties, Love, the Creative instincts — will power and 
the abihty to be, to do, to know. 

Men have perverted— misused, or left unused 
— these qualities and substituted hate, lust, self- 
indulgence, ignorance, and indolence — and as a 
result disease and poverty and unhappiness are 
in the world. They are not God's will. You are 
not a Christian or a religious woman if you are 
talking about your diseases to every one about 
you. 

You may be born with a tendency to disease 
through the many wrong thoughts and habits 
of ancestors. But if you fill your soiil full of Love 
— great, deep, high, broad, profound Love — and 
if you live with a prayer of thankfulness in your 
heart to God for Life, and believe health is your 
right and that it will be given to you, and fashion 
your whole conduct to suit that thought, it will 
he given. 

It will never come if you harp on the old strain 
of ''God's will" when you suffer and persist in 
having an audience for every pain. Not only 
will it never come to you, but you will destroy 
the health of those about you. You pride your- 
self on being a good wom.an and a heroine where 
sickness is concerned. All invalids do. But you 



KEEP STILL III 

are not a good woman if you spoil the beautiful 
morning hours by a recital of your symptoms 
and send out into other minds microbes of dis- 
eased thought. It is not that we must never men- 
tion our indisposition. Rigid rules in any direc- 
tion do more harm than good. A silent martyr 
usually makes people uncomfortable with the 
eloquence of silence. 

If you break your limb, say so, and say it will 
heal. If you break any law of health and fall ill, 
confess it. To ''deny'' it is ridiculous, and creates 
only ridicule and antagonism. But, while you 
confess it, affirm your speedy restoration. If 
you have not been able to keep yourself from 
serious illness by right thoughts and methods of 
life, employ wise skill to restore you. But for 
God's sake, humanity's sake, and your own sake, 
stop this eternal harping on your diseases. 

Stop describing your symptoms, all the awful 
''operations" you have passed through, and let 
your relatives and friends take a respite from 
feeling your pulse, finding your temperature, and 
looking at your tongue. 

Keep still and be well. 



XX 

''the dangerous age'' 

God finished woman in ,the twilight hour, 
And said, ''To-morrow thou shalt find thy place: 
Man's complement, the mother of the race, 
With love the motive power — 
The one compelling power." 

AVERY yoiing married woman ought to cast 
a thoughtftd glance along the future and 
make some provision for middle age. Not pro- 
vision for a rainy day, but preparation which 
will insure a simny season when middle life ar- 
rives. At twenty-five, forty seems far away; but 
that age speeds toward us with the velocity of a 
flying express train. 

It is a beautiful age when we meet it with the 
right imderstanding of all it may mean and with 
wise preparation. Culture, accomplishments, a 
perfectly developed body, a well-trained mind, 
an enlightened spirit, a sympathetic heart, an up- 
lifted soul — all these mean a lovely middle and 
old age. And all these things must, to reach their 
best development, be begun in the earlier season 
of Hfe. 



*^THE DANGEROUS AGE" 113 

Between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five 
the life of the average woman becomes either 
gray or gay. 

In the world of fashion the *'gay'' matron is 
to be found. She leads in her circle, she invents 
new amusements, she delights in being called 
"dangerous,'' and she practises all the arts of 
coquetry upon the men she meets, especially 
men younger than herself. Life is a feverish 
dream to her, and she is never happy save when 
in the midst of social excitement. Not infrequent- 
ly she brings a scandal upon her name through 
indiscretions of conduct, and she figures more 
frequently in the divorce court than do younger 
women. 

In the quieter walks of life the women who 
reach thirty-five begin to find the world assum- 
ing a gray color. All the gold and crimson fades ; 
the ambitions of early youth are lost, with many 
of its illusions; romance has faded, and duty only 
remains. They perform the tasks reqtiired of them 
as wives and mothers in a mechanical manner, 
and become ''settled" in figure and stolid in face 
and prematurely old in appearance. Yet at thirty- 
five a woman is entering the very best period of 
her whole life. 

From then until sixty at least she should be in 
possession of her most ripened mental powers, 
and she should be most pleasing to the eye, like 
a radiant autumn landscape. Life shotild be a 
thing of delight to her, and she ought to enjoy it 



114 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

with more intensity than ever before because of 
her deeper understanding and broader sympathies 
and clearer judgment. 

It is not difficult for a student of htiman nature 
to imderstand how the society woman of middle 
age becomes "gay." Woman's emotional nature 
is at its height at thirty-five and forty, and she 
craves love more than in her shy and unformed 
youth. Mrs. Grundy incites her votaries to 
folly and shuts her eyes to indiscretions so long 
as they are not flagrant. If marriage has proven 
a disappointment to the society woman she easily 
plunges into the vortex of fashionable dissipation 
and finds her only enjoyment in its whirlpool of 
folly. 

The very craving for sentiment in the heart 
of the mature woman in the village or cotmtry 
town is what makes life assume a gray color for 
her. She is ashamed of her own weakness and 
puts away the thoughts which assail her as evi- 
dences of a morbid mind. She tells herself that 
she is no longer young, that she has outlived her 
romantic period, and that she must be satisfied to 
accept the dull old age which lies before her. So 
she meets it half-way upon the road to shov/ she 
does not care. 

The husband of such a woman does not dream 
what is going on in her mind and soul. He has 
become a money-maniac or is absorbed in pol- 
itics or in the pursuit of some career. If his 
home is well ordered, his wife and children 



^^THE DANGEROUS AGE'' 115 

comfortable, it is as far as his ambitions lead 
him. 

He regards sentiment as a thing of the past, 
and it never occurs to him to pay his wife a com- 
pliment or speak a word of love to her. That 
would savor of weakness to his mind. So the 
gray years go by, and if one day he notices that 
his wife looks very old and commonplace he feels 
a sense of personal injury in the fact and wonders 
why some women lose their charm so much sooner 
than others. 

The face cannot stay young unless the heart 
is kept warm. Every woman who passes thirty 
ought to keep her brain, heart, and mind alive 
and warm with human sympathy and emotion. 
She ought to interest herself in the lives of 
others and to make her friendship valuable to 
the young. 

She should keep her body supple and avoid 
losing the lines of grace, and she should select 
some study or work to occupy spare hours and 
to lend a zest to the coming years. Every woman 
in the comfortable walks of life can find time for 
such a study. No woman of tact, charm, refine- 
ment, and feeling need ever let her husband, (un- 
less she has married a clod,) become indifferent or 
commonplace in his treatment of her. Man re- 
flects to an astonishing degree womans* senti- 
ments for him. 

Keep sentiment alive in your own heart, ma- 
dam, and in the heart of your husband. If he 



ii6 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

sees that other men admire you he will be more 
alert to the necessity of remaining your lover. 

Take the happy, safe, medium path between a 
gray and a gay life by keeping it radiant and 
bright. Read and think and talk of cheerful, 
hopeful, interesting subjects. Avoid smaU gos- 
sip, and be careful in your criticism of neighbors. 
Sometimes we must criticize, but speak to people 
whose faults you feel a word of counsel may 
amend — not of them to others. 

Make your life after it reaches its noon glorious 
with sunlight, rich with harvests, and bright with 
color. Be alive in mind, heart and body. Be 
joyous without giddiness, loving without silliness, 
attractive without being flirtatious, attentive to 
others' needs without being officious, and in- 
structive without too great a display of erudition. 

Be a noble, loving, lovable woman. 



XXI 

THE SENSE OF HUMOR 

Out of the blackness groping 

My heart finds a world in bloom; 

For it somehow is fashioned for hoping 
And it cannot live in the gloom. 

IT is a great thing to possess a sense of humor. 
It is a misfortune to be devoid of that sense. 

To be able to see the ''funny" side of life en- 
ables one to laugh where others cry and to be 
amused where others are angry and distressed 
over unexpected or undesired events. 

The man with a sense of htmior loses his way 
on a journey and wanders far afield, but he is so 
amused over his queer experience that he keeps 
himself from being nervous or out of temper. 

The woman who has an acute sense of the ri- 
diculous or the comical is able to laugh when left 
without servants just as she is expecting a house- 
ful of guests; and she receives her guests in such 
excellent spirits that they all join in her mirth, 
and in some way the difficult situation is sure 
to resolve itself into a huge joke, and everybody 
has the best kind of a time. 



ii8 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

The woman devoid of humor in that situation 
develops nervous prostration. Women are said 
by scientists to lack a sense of humor. The Ger- 
man nation, like the English, is supposed to be 
quite devoid of the quality of brain which en- 
ables a human being to find easily something 
laughable in life. But quite recently a lady living 
in Berlin proved the exception to the rule, if rule 
it be. When she learned that two aeronauts had 
dropped, with their basket, from a balloon right 
through the roof of her house and into her bou- 
doir, destroying chimney, roof, and bric-a-brac 
as they went down, she sent the gentlemen a note 
expressing her regret that she was ''not at home'* 
when they dropped in. 

Many another woman would have gone into 
hysterics and then appealed to the courts to 
award her damages. 

An American woman had planned a week of 
amusement and pleasure at the house party of a 
friend. It was to be the star week of the year. 
But when it arrived she was lying in bed with a 
broken limb, caused by jumping from a window 
to escape fire. When her friend and expected 
hostess called to condole with her she found the 
patient jeopardizing the splintered limb by her 
laughter. *'It strikes me as very droll,'' said the 
invalid, ''that a fire and a broken leg constitute 
my pleasure this star week of the year." 

Yet there is another side to this quality of hu- 
mor in men and women. When we laugh at our- 



THE SENSE OF HUMOR 119 

selves, at our own foibles and follies, at fate and 
circtimstance, it is all very well. 

But when we laugh at other people — not with 
them, but at them — when we make them targets 
for fun and ridicule, the keen sense of humor 
with which we excuse ourselves hardly changes 
the fact that we are not kind, cultured, or loyal to 
our friends or fellow-men. 

A sweet-natured woman gave a reception for 
a celebrity. The celebrity attended it, but spent 
the entire evening in sly and covert ridicule of 
the hostess and the friends she had invited to 
meet the guest of honor. 

She excused herself afterward to an acquaint- 
ance on the ground that she was possessed of *'a 
keen sense of htimor,'' and that the hostess and 
her friends were really a very droll lot. 

Still another woman, afflicted with the same 
excess of humor in her make-up, ridiculed a simple 
little entertainment given by home talent at the 
house of a friend. The hostess had no idea of 
giving a Wagnerian performance, but the atti- 
tude of the lady of humorous proclivities was that 
of one who had bought the privilege of a First- 
Nighter to criticize an ambitious opening, not the 
attitude of a kind and cultured woman in the home 
of a friend. The himian mind is a sort of trap, 
and it catches whatever we set it to obtain. 

Everywhere about us are funny things, ridicu- 
lous things, sad, glad, and bad things, happening; 
and there are sweet things, and beautiful things. 



I20 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and hopeful things, and merry and dramatic oc- 
currences. 

We will catch and retain in our mental traps 
those things which we seek. To seek the humor- 
ous and amusing side of life is an excellent habit ; 
but to become a chronic ''guyer/' and to ridicule 
where we could at least remain silent or where 
we could bestow a kindly word of appreciation 
for the motive, places us on the level with the 
circus clown. 

Much of this ridicule and guying indulged in 
by human beings comes, not from a keen sense of 
humor, but from petty, despicable jealousy. In 
country towns there is always some one girl who 
makes a practice of ridiculing the admirers of 
other young women. But the habit cannot be 
attributed to an unusual appreciation of the com- 
ical, however much she may claim it to be. It is 
merely the outcome of envy. Before you laugh 
at other people, their manners, habits, or perform- 
ances, be sure you know why you laugh. To 
laugh at the wrong time or thing is often an evi- 
dence of ignorance and vulgarity. 

Two bell-boys at a hotel watched the painful 
progress of a partially paralyzed young man 
across the office and nudged each other and 
laughed audibly. 

The cruelty of these boys was the result of 
ignorance. Their mothers had never taught 
them to feel sympathy and show courtesy to the 
afflicted. 



THE SENSE OF HUMOR 121 

Whatever they saw that was iinusual they con- 
sidered ''funny." A great many grown people 
who have had opportunities for culture are equally 
vulgar when it comes to the delicate sensibilities 
of their fellow-pilgrims. 

There are a few rules which a mother might 
teach her children as soon as they arrive at a 
thinking age regarding the laughable things of life. 

Never laugh at the crippled, the deformed, the 
old, the poor, the badly dressed, or the unfortu- 
nate human being. 

Never laugh at the pygmy or giant, unless they 
are performing in public where they expect laugh- 
ter. 

Never laugh at the foreigner who wears a dif- 
ferent costimie from the one you are accustomed 
to see. Remember, your costimie would look as 
strange in his country, and in all probability not 
nearly so artistic. 

When you are a guest never laugh at the enter- 
tainment which is offered you unless you are 
convinced it was intended to make you laugh. 
Just as you woiild refrain from criticising the 
food at table, even if it did not appeal to your 
palate, refrain from criticising the entertainment 
your friends offer you. 

Laugh to keep yourself and the world about 
you in good himior. Never laugh to make others 
tincomfortable. 



XXII 

SCIENCE AND THE AURA 

Science, the doubter of accepted truths, 
Shall yet reveal God's secrets to the world 
And prove the facts it seeks to overthrow. 

IN the oldest religions of the earth we find men- 
tion of the auras. 

Auras and haloes are generally supposed to be 
crowns of light hovering over the heads of saints. 

By practical-minded people the aura has long 
been regarded as a delusion of overwrought sen- 
sibilities. 

Religious devotees, mediums, fanatics, poets, 
and insane beings were alone considered suscep- 
tible to these hallucinations. 

Theosophists have always talked of auras as 
a part -of the mental and physical belongings of 
every human being. 

But by the material mind the theosophist is 
considered insane. And now comes Science, lag- 
ging along, with its proof of what the theoso- 
phists and other advanced souls have long known 
to be true. 

That there is a haze or atmosphere surrounding 



SCIENCE AND THE AURA 123 

the human body and differing in the case of each 
individual, and that its existence is susceptible 
of physical proof, is the assertion made by Dr. 
Walter J. Kilner, a London physician, whose in- 
vestigation of the subject has covered many years. 

In a book Dr. Kilner gives the result of his in- 
vestigations and invites those interested in the 
subject to make the same experiments, using the 
means which he employed to aid the eye in per- 
ceiving what he calls the human aura. 

Dr. Kilner maintains that he has not only 
perceived v/hat the clairvoyants have declared 
they saw, but even more. Not only do people 
possess auras, according to Dr. Kilner, but their 
auras, differing in the case of each individual, 
and very distinctly so in the case of women and 
men, are probably inherited, he thinks. Then, 
too, he says the physical condition affects at once 
the aura. 

Whatever value the revelation of auras will 
have for the scientific world. Dr. E^lner thinks 
will lie in this point, for, being thus affected by 
physical conditions, auras will be a distinct aid 
in diagnosis. 

Dr. Kilner gives examples in his book of per- 
sons suffering from epilepsy whose auras all ex- 
hibited a different outline from those of persons 
in good health. The healthier a person the more 
distinct his aura. 

''The influence of heredity and temperament 
upon the aura," says the doctor, ''is one of the 



124 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

most fascinating parts of this subject, and at the 
same time it does not require a prophet to foresee 
that an inquirer in this direction is likely to reap 
a big harvest.'* 

Dr. Kilner likens the aura to the rays pro- 
ceeding from a magnet. When looked at through 
his screen the magnetic cloud emanating from a 
magnet appeared distinctly visible in the same 
manner as did the human aura. He believes that 
the forces giving rise to the himian aura are quite 
distinct from those producing the magnetic cloud, 
and that there is more than a single force at work, 
one producing the outer and another the inner aura. 

These forces, he believes, are most probably 
generated in the body in some such way as the 
nervous force. 

He also lays down the law that the aura is 
influenced by the will power. He has made many 
experiments which have gone to prove this, such 
as telling a person to will that a ray should ex- 
tend from his finger toward another person. The 
ray, he says, soon made its appearance and dis- 
appeared directly the patient left off willing. 

Dr. Kilner mentions a young woman twenty 
years old upon whom he experimented, and whom 
he asked to shoot rays from her two shoulders, 
first one and then the other. The beams mani- 
fested themselves almost directly, taking an up- 
ward and outward direction. She was asked to 
turn sideways then, and to will a ray to extend 
from the tip of her nose. 



SCIENCE AND THE AURA 125 

''In this/' said the doctor, ''she was perfectly 
successful, as it appeared almost immediately 
and stretched outward seven or eight inches. 
This was beyond the external margin of the vis- 
ible outer aura." 

Dr. Kilner lays distinct emphasis on the state- 
ment that he is not an occultist, nor does he make 
pretense to clairvoyancy. What he wants people 
to understand is that his researches have been 
entirely physical and that they can be repeated 
by any one. 

"There cannot be the slightest doubt,'' he 
says, "as to the reality of the existence of an aura 
enveloping human beings, and this will be in a 
short time a universally accepted fact, now that 
it can be made visible to any one possessing nor- 
mal eyesight. It would indeed be strange if the 
aura did not vary under different circumstances, 
and we firmly believe that a study of its modi- 
fications will show that they will have a diagnos- 
tic value." 

Now, in the face of these scientific facts, it 
behooves each one of us to give some thought to 
the subject of auras. 

We need to realise, first of all, that the aura 
is as much a part of us as our heads or hands. 
And that its shape and color are largely under 
our control. 

Long ago the theosophists and clairvoyants 
said the dark-gray or green or muddy-brown aura 
was an evidence of unwholesome conditions of 



126 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

mind and body. Blue and pink and yellow were 
desirable shades for auras, indicating spirituality, 
affection, and intellect. 

Dr. Kilner's book classifies people according 
to the color of their auras — those whose a'uras 
appeared to be blue, blue mixed with gray, and 
those with gray auras. Taking these classifica- 
tions, he examined one hundred persons. He found 
forty in the blue-aura class. Of these forty per- 
sons none was below the average in mental power, 
and some were distinctly above it. 

Thirty-six were in the second class, with auras 
showing a combination of blue and gray. Among 
these were two epileptics and one with meningitis. 
Seventeen had gray auras, and am^ong these sev- 
enteen were two eccentric people, six epileptics, 
one insane person, and three who were mentally 
dull. 

From those observations the doctor deduces 
the theory that if you have a blue aura you are 
most apt to be mentally fit, but if your aura is 
gray you are probably a bit deficient in intellec- 
tual power. 

Now that science so closely agrees with the 
seers, we cannot reasonably doubt that psychic 
people have seen and do see auras. And it ren- 
ders one a bit uncomfortable to think how many 
clear-seeing eyes may have beheld very ugly auras 
emanating from us. 

Every thought, emotion, and feeling is having 
its influence in shaping and coloring our auras. 



SCIENCE AND THE AURA 127 

If we were given free choice of selecting a hide- 
ous or a beautiful head-dress, or hat, there would 
be no hesitation about the one chosen. 

We are given this privilege of selecting our 
auras. 

Or at least we are given the privilege and power 
to change those which may have been given us 
by inheritance from other lives or which may 
have been created by wrong methods of educa- 
tion in this life. 

Not only is your aura visible to many clear- 
seeing eyes and to the eye of Science, but its 
influence is felt by every one. 

The dark-gray or brown aura sends out a 
gloomy and depressing influence; and the light, 
bright colors send out love and cheer and aspira- 
tion to all who come in your presence. 

And as you color and beautify this aura you 
are helping build your body into greater strength 
and your brain into greater power. 

Think of the aura as an absolute possession, 
belonging to you, and given you to make beau- 
tiful in its appearance and its influence; and so 
surely as you work toward this result shall peace 
and prosperity and health come to you and your 
power for usefulness increase. 



XXIII 

THE MONEY QUESTION 

And man shall leave his fevered dreams behind him — 
The dreams of avarice and lust and sin; 

And seek his Lord; yea, he shall seek and find Him 
In his own soul, where He has always been. 

WE talk much of woman's independence in 
America, of the generosity and unselfish- 
ness of American husbands, and of the wonderful 
privileges enjoyed by wives in all classes of society 
in this land of the free and home of the brave. 
But there is another side to the picture, not fre- 
quently shown to the public. 

In every city and town in America, even to a 
certain degree in our largest metropolis (and sec- 
ond and third largest), exist women who dress 
well, live well, and donate generous simis to char- 
ity, yet who never have the handling of one dollar 
without asking for it and without saying to what 
purpose it is to he dedicated. 

These women are the wives of well-to-do men; 
many of them are the wives of men of large 
wealth; and such a condition is reputed to exist 



THE MONEY QUESTION 129 

in the home of one of America's most widely- 
known multimillionaires. 

Knowledge of the humiliating position of these 
wives comes to the public through the secretive 
methods by which they endeavor to possess them- 
selves of a few dollars of their husband's money 
without having to submit to his catechism. One 
woman asked her French teacher to make a bill 
of double size, and when he cashed the check to 
give her the amount remaining after his bill was 
paid. Another follows a similar course with a 
dressmaker; another with a physician or dentist. 

In every case the husband has the superficial 
reputation of being a most generous provider and 
a good husband. In almost every case the man is 
proud of having his wife and daughters dress well 
and entertain lavishly. 

Quite frequently this generous provider is ex- 
travagant in the matter of expensive foods, wines, 
garments, and jewels; but while he pays his bills 
without comment and asks no retrenchment, he 
becomes a miser and a slaveholder the moment 
his wife asks for a purse of her own or a regular 
allowance for her personal needs. 

It seems almost incredible that such a condi- 
tion can exist to-day in our land of opulence, and 
among people who are supposed to be cultured 
and progressive, and where woman is considered 
to be queen in her own realm. 

Yet this condition does exist to an amazing ex- 
tent. It is one cause of the growth of the Equal 



I30 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

Franchise party, and invariably where it exists 
the men who are the home misers are violently 
opposed to allowing woman the vote. 

These men are rehcs of an old-fashioned system 
which must give way before the march of progress 
— an old system where woman was regarded as- a 
cross between a child and a grov/n person of ar- 
rested m^entality, and where, instead of being 
man's helpmate and comrade, she was merely his 
legal chattel and upper servant of his household. 

With the increase of wealth and the changed 
conditions of living he has ceased to think of her 
in this light; but, while he regards her with suffi- 
cient pride to wish her to be well cared for, well 
appareled, and well waited on, he has not been 
able to imderstand her nature sufficiently to trust 
her with money or to realize the indelicacy of his 
treatment of her in this respect. The daily humili- 
ation which many refined wives endure in the 
matter of money makes the position of their 
servants seem enviable to them. 

There can be no romance, no sentiment, no 
happy love life, and no mutual respect between 
man and wife without financial independence and 
complete trust in money matters. If a woman 
shows a tendency to use money unwisely it should 
be the duty of the husband to train her in business 
methods. 

There is no better training for a woman in this 
matter than having an allowance and understand- 
ing that all her personal needs must be provided 



THE MONEY QUESTION 131 

for on a stated sum. Once supplied with this 
allowance, she should ask no favors beyond, and 
should be asked no questions regarding her use 
of it. 

The man who compels his wife to ask for every 
penny she uses is not a credit to any country, 
and is undeserving the name of a good American. 



XXIV 

SEX 

Over and over we came this way, 

For just one purpose; oh, stubborn Soul, 

Turn with a will to your work to-day 
And learn the lesson of Self-Control. 

PERSONS of large intellect, who have given 
years of their lives to profound study of life 
and all its mysteries, make bold to assert that 
long and long ago, in a prehistoric period, there 
was but one sex. Yet that one sex was bi-sexual, 
both man and woman; and when that race occu- 
pied the plane of manifestation beings were created 
by other laws than those which now govern 
nature. 

Gradually the masculine element in some of 
these beings began to be accented, the feminine 
element in others; and so, after many eons of 
time, the two separate sexes were established. 

At first the all-male creature or the all-female 
was regarded as some strange specimen, a distor- 
tion, an abnormal creation. But gradually they 
increased in ntmibers until they became universal. 

And then followed all the evils of sex excesses 



SEX 133 

and abuses which have made so much trouble in 
the world ever since and have about culminated 
in the present Iron Age of the earth. 

And now, it is said, the pendulum is beginning 
to swing back toward the bi-sexual standard again 
as the growing tendency of masculinity of the 
female and the growing femininity of the male 
indicate. 

And all this is watched over by the Great Lords 
of Karma, who have given souls this experience 
in order that they may learn by pain and suffering 
the folly of seeking for happiness in any paths 
which lead away from the spiritual. 

One of the first evils of the sex separation showed 
itself in the two distinct codes of morals estab- 
lished for men and women who broke the laws of 
the world in sexual matters. 

Through some strange course of reasoning it 
was supposed that the feminine being must be 
all chastity, all virtue, all spirituality, and wholly 
beyond and above temptation of any kind, and 
that she must be kept in ignorance of sex mat- 
ters until she was a wife and mother. Yet she 
must prove perfect in both relations and fill those 
positions with unerring skill and wisdom. 

Meantime the man was expected to be sensual 
and polygamous, to make and break his own laws, 
to follow his impulses and use no self-control, 
because he was a man, and to be forgiven and 
accepted by society at large, no matter what his 
record. 



134 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

Then the race began to study into laws of hered- 
ity, and it was observed that daughters more fre- 
quently resembled the father than the mother and 
that they quite as frequently inherited the father's 
nature as his features, and some inquiring minds 
asked why the daughter of the sensual, pleasure- 
loving father, who was the living image of her sire, 
should be expected to grow into a miracle of mod- 
esty and virtue without any guide from her par- 
ents or society or any special effort made in her 
behalf, but merely on the supposition that she 
was protected by her sex, or why she should be 
pimished more severely than man if she failed. 

Some wise minds of an inquiring tendency are 
asking that question every year, and more minds 
of a conventional mold are finding it a difficult 
question to answer. Gradually it is being borne 
in upon the public consciousness that men and 
women are created by the same powers and with 
the same tendencies and emotions and passions 
and temptations, and that they should be pro- 
tected and judged by the same laws. Gradually, 
but very, very slowly, the trend of public opin- 
ion is toward a larger view in these matters of 
sex. 

It is a curious thing that the Christian Church 
has been so very tardy in making the path of the 
repentant woman sinner easier, since of all sinners 
mentioned by Christ the Master, He was most 
lenient toward the Magdalen and the woman 
taken in adultery. 



SEX 135 

His most severe word toward them was, ''Go, 
and sin no more." 

It is the misfortune for the world that there is 
no fuller record of what He did to help them after 
they went forth and tried to sin no more. If the 
gentle Master had realized just how hard and 
cruel and severe His avowed disciples were to be 
in these later centuries toward the women who 
sought to reform after having fallen, He surely 
would have given more ample instructions for 
both the erring ones and the disciples. 



XXV 

THE POVv^ER OF RECONSTRUCTION 

Oh, great this age; its mighty work is Man — 
Knowing himself the universal life; 
And great our faith which shows itself in works 
For human freedom and for racial good. 

YOU can reconstruct your life, no matter what 
your environment, physically, mentally, and 
morally, as well as financially, if you will. 

If you came into the world with weak limgs 
and anemic blood, it will require more effort for 
you to become robust than for some well-bom, 
virile child who has only to breathe and frolic 
to keep in health. But you can do it if you will 
practise deep breathing and learn what not to 
eat and drink and insist upon your right to all 
the health and vigor of the universe. 

I have met and talked with a hale and hearty 
woman of sixty whose family all passed away 
with consumption and who was herself expected 
to die in her ''teens." She resolved to live, how- 
ever, and began to breathe. She devoted half 
an hour three times a day to deep breathing in 
the open air. At first it caused violent coughing- 



THE POWER OF RECONSTRUCTION 137 

spells, but they grew less frequent as she persisted. 
She lived outdoors as much as possible and slept 
in a well- ventilated room. She put compresses of 
cold water on her chest for an hour every night 
and began taking cold sponge -baths until she 
was strong enough to indulge in cold tub- 
baths. 

She gave up pastry, fine bread, tea and coffee, 
and ate no pork. She drank nothing at her meals, 
but copiously of fresh spring water and good 
creamy milk between meals. She practised gentle 
calisthenics every day, increasing their force as 
she gained in strength; and night and day she 
thought health for herself and believed she was 
to become robust. She realized her expectation 
— ^married, and was the mother of strong children, 
whom she began to train in their infancy to 
breathe and exercise properly, to live out of doors, 
and to bathe in cold water. 

There is no evil power, no evil inheritance, 
no cruel environment, which can hinder or cir- 
cumvent a strong and determined soul seeking 
for health, usefulness, truth, and success. 

Keep that fact well in mind and live to it, no 
matter what the whole world may say to the 
contrary. Fear nothing. You are a part of the 
splendid universe, and you are here to get the 
best out of this phase of life. You can do this 
only by developing the very finest qualities in 
yourself and by controlling whatever is unworthy 
and unwholesome and disagreeable. Be well and 
10 



138 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

strong, because sickness is disagreeable for your- 
self and to others. I repeat, health is the simplest 
thing in life if 3^ou breathe, eat, exercise, and 
think properly. It requires no aid of any one if 
you will be faithful in these things. 

Be industrious. 

You were put on earth to do your share of work, 
and idleness is a sin. Do something even if you 
cannot at once do the work you prefer; and all 
the time assert that your right employment is 
coming to you. It will come. Look for something 
to be thankful and glad over each day, and you 
will find it. ConvSider each disappointment and 
trouble as so much experience and as a temporary 
lesson set for you to learn. When it seems in- 
supportable, as these things do at first, go alone 
by yourself, sit down, and take a few deep in- 
halations, and say, ''I am breathing in the benefit 
and strength and wisdom which this experience 
was meant to bestow upon me.'' After five min- 
utes of this thought and practice you will go forth 
with calmness and new strength to face the 
world. Cast out every bitter and resentful 
thought. Nothing of worth can be achieved by 
you in any line while your vital forces are vi- 
tiated by anger, revenge, or hatred. 

Let the Great Lawmaker of the universe ad- 
just things. All you need to do is to make your- 
self a receptacle for His love and power to do 
good in the world and to your fellow-men. If 
any one does evil to you, pass on your way without 



THE POWER OF RECONSTRUCTION 139 

fear or malice. No one can harm you if you do 
not harm yourself by retaliation. 

Fill your soul and mind so full of love and 
sympathy and joy that nothing lesser can find 
accommodation. Once you do this you are im- 
mune from disaster. Sorrow will find you, but 
not misfortune. Evil cannot touch you, and bless- 
ings will follow you. 

You are Master of your Destiny. 

If we sit down and center our thoughts on the 
tip of the tongue for fifteen minutes every day 
we shall soon be conscious of an increased sense 
of taste. If we center them on hope we shall find 
hopefulness coming. If we compel the mind 
to turn away from unpleasant topics, and by 
assertion and reiteration of assertions teach it 
to think joy and health and happiness and suc- 
cess we are producing those conditions for our- 
selves. 

God has filled an immense storehouse called 
the Universe with all good things. He wants us 
to possess them. He has made us His heirs. 
Just so surely as we will believe this and assert 
it and think it, no matter what darkness and pov- 
erty we are in, conditions will change, and we 
will come into our own little by little. 

This cannot be done instantaneously by one 
who has to contend against a lifelong habit of 
despondent thought, but it can be done by per- 
sistency and practice. It is the law and *'is good 
for one and good for all." 



XXVI 

THE LAW OF JUSTICE 

You are your own devil, you are your own God, 
You fashioned the paths that your footsteps have trod. 
And no one can save you from error or sin 
Until you shall hark to the spirit within. 

WHATEVER you are here on earth, what- 
ever you possess, you have in some life 
earned. And upon you, and you alone, depends 
your next situation. If you have poverty and ill 
health and you are determined to improve your 
condition by industry, economy, and sensible liv- 
ing, though you may die before you attain your 
aim, still you have laid the spiritual foundation 
for a better fortune and a better body in the next 
incarnation. 

If you have longed for education and accom- 
plishment, if you have struggled to obtain them, 
every effort you make will be placed to your credit 
when you come again. 

If you have beauty, talent, wealth, and are not 
making good use of them — use which will benefit 
others and leave the race better off for your having 
lived — then you will be obliged to return without 



THE LAW OF JUSTICE 141 

beauty, without talent, without wealth, and work 
your way back to divine favor. 

This great law of cause and effect is called 
karma. We are all making good or bad karma 
every hour. 

The fair working-girl who is turning away from 
the temptation to wear fine apparel at the cost of 
her self-respect, and who is seeing herself grow 
faded and care-worn while she toils to support an 
old mother or a little sister, is called good karma. 
She is preparing a beautiful body and fair raiment 
and a happy environment for herself in the next 
incarnation. 

The companion who laughs at her while she 
drives by in her ''protector's " motor-car is making 
bad karma. She is preparing an ugly or deformed 
body for herself when she comes again, a body 
which will not be attractive to vice, and she will 
have to do the toil she has refused to do here. 
There is no escaping the law of karma, which is the 
law of justice. 

If you have been educated on traditional lines, 
you are thinking that the Creator of this vast 
universe makes each soul from new material and 
sends it to quicken the imborn child at a certain 
period. 

If you think anything at all about the matter 
beyond that you must wonder why one of these 
God-made souls is sent into a palace, another into 
the slums. 

If you decide that some are made to suffer and 



142 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

be poor and unfortunate on earth in order that 
they shall shine above their affluent brothers after 
they go to heaven, then you must think the 
Creator a very partial and unjust being, or He 
would not show such favoritism. Any way you 
reason it out you will find the whole matter in- 
compatible with justice unless you accept the idea 
of reincarnation. 

Briefly told, the idea is, that the Great Power 
which made the imiverse has always existed and 
will always exist. And all that exists has always 
existed, and every soul that animates the body 
of any human being to-day has animated the 
bodies of innumerable beings over and over again. 

It is, of course, a very vast thought. But the 
idea is not one whit more difficult to grasp than 
the modern one, that each soul is made out of 
new material and that the beginning of life was 
a few thousand years ago. ' It is easier to imagine 
a circle without beginning and without end than 
a straight line which begins nowhere." 

The creative power is so vast that it is almost 
unthinkable. But we have to accept that as a 
fact. And it is so magnificent and stupendous a 
fact that it thrills the mind and heart and soul, 
unless all are atrophied or undeveloped. This 
earth is only one of millions of worlds more won- 
derful, and we are but expressions of that vast 
power. Everything that exists anywhere is divine. 
There is nothing which is not an expression of 
what we call God. 



THE LAW OF JUSTICE 143 

In the course of eons of time we have occupied 
many bodies and many worlds ; and we are in this 
world what our former lives made us. We will 
be in our next incarnation just what we are now 
preparing ourselves to be. 

The law governing this universe is the law of 
cause and effect. If in some former existence you 
lived a life of luxury and license, if you ''trod 
flowery paths of dalliance'* and ignored the voice 
of reason and wisdom, then you are back in this 
world for the purpose of working out your debt 
to the universe. You are poor, frail of body, and 
between you and health and success and comfort 
and happiness lie seemingly insurmountable ob- 
stacles. You look on other more fortunate human 
beings and wonder why God has been so unkind 
to you. 

But you have made your own destiny. And now 
you possess the power to change that destiny. 
You can change it to a wonderful degree, here 
and now; and you can build a glorious destiny 
for your next coming. 

It is possible that your next life will be spent 
on some other planet; but wherever you go, the 
character you are now making will shape your 
destiny. Besides this, there are intervening 
''heavens'' and "hells," through which we must 
pass and in which we must dwell, according to 
our desserts, and each thought and act of your life 
here is determining what your experiences in those 
planes of existence will be. Modern creeds have 



144 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

taught the selfish, mercenary, and self-indulgent 
woman that when she dies, asking God to forgive 
her sins, she will immediately join the spirit of 
her lovely child who passed away in early youth. 
But such a woman has not made such a reunion 
possible. She will have to earn her admission 
before she will be admitted to the realm where her 
child dwells. 

Those who think hate and envy and malice, 
those who live wholly and only for the enjoyment 
of the senses, must seek their own kind in the 
intervening realms. ' Spiritual birds of a feather 
flock together, as well as the earth birds. '^ This 
consciousness should act as a mighty stimulus to 
persistent and patient efforts at self-conquest and 
self-development — conquest of the unworthy and 
weak and indolent impulses, development of the 
worthy and strong and aspiring side of our natures. 

For every such effort means a step forward 
toward realization of our ideal and its absolute 
attainment, either here or elsewhere. 



XXVII 

THE BUSINESS OF LIFE 

Forth from little motes in Chaos 
We have come to what we are; 

And no evil force can stay us — 
We shall mount from star to star. 

LIFE means action, from the cradle to the 
J funeral pile. 

The situation into which we are born and our 
mental and physical equipments at birth are the 
result of past actions in other lives, and all our 
actions while here are forming conditions for 
lives to come. There are limitless possibilities 
in this life to overcome, whatever conditions 
hamper or annoy us, and to bring into realization 
whatever hopes or aspirations lure us. We have 
not begun to sound the depths in our minds. 

The most brilliant, the most studious, the most 
reverent, the most persistent have only sailed 
about the shores of this great ocean; they have 
not even imagined what deep waters lie beyond 
and what rare pearls lie under those deep waters. 
But we have shining examples of individuals who 
have achieved so much under such discouraging 



146 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

conditions that their lives become an inspiration 
to all who meditate upon them. 

Lincoln, born in poverty, reared in the same 
hard school, surrounded by the commonplace 
and the undesirable, and deprived of all oppor- 
tunities for advancement, made himself a colossal 
figure in the eyes of centuries to come through 
high thinking, clean living, and the persistent 
cultivation of the old immortal virtues of hon- 
esty, truth, courage, and imselfishness and de- 
votion to those duties which stood nearest. 

All his thoughts, all his ambitions, all his ac- 
tions, from childhood to maturity, were directed 
toward the attainment of those virtues and their 
practical application to every issue which life 
presented. Unconsciously to himself, he was 
treading the path to immortal fame; he was 
building a character which would invite tremen- 
dous responsibilities and creating the strength to 
meet them grandly. 

He knew what life meant. It meant action 
and achievement through growth. 

There is no such thing as inaction during this life. 
We are continually going forward or backward. 

You are either stronger or weaker this year 
than you were last year. 

You are braver or more cowardly. 

You are more hopeful or more pessimistic. 

You are more capable mentally or less so. 

You have better or poorer command of your 
forces. 



THE BUSINESS OF LIFE 147 

You have more efficiency or not as much. 

You are nearer your goal or farther from it. 

You are a better human being or not as good. 

Next year at this time you will be still farther 
onward or still farther backward. 

Every thought, every word, and every act of 
each day is chiseling out the statue you are mak- 
ing of yourself. 

If you desire to be an expression of the Crea- 
tor's finest handiwork, you must work with care. 

Delicate tools are these thoughts of ours, and 
they must be used with caution. 

Every morning say to yourself (the Self self): 
''To-day I will think of whatever is beautiful, 
strong, noble, wholesome, and worthy. I will 
entertain hope, courage, reverence, gratitude, and 
Ipve as the guests of my heart. I will make 
thoughts of health at ease in the guest-chamber 
of my mind, so dis-ease may not enter. I will 
achieve something worth while in my chosen 
field of endeavor. I will work faithfully, but I 
will find time to sit alone with thoughts of my 
Creator for a little while, and no worldly ambi- 
tion or anxiety shall intrude upon that time.'' 

Just as surely as you carry out your days along 
these lines, just as surely shall the true meaning 
of life come to you, and you shall know God, and 
" you shall know that the meaning of life is God 
*and that in Him are all the things for which you 
long: Health, Happiness, Prosperity, Usefulness, 
Beauty, and Joy/ 



I4S THE ART OF BEIXG ALIVE 

And you shall know that the earth is not a vale 
of tears, but a great and beautiful preparatory 
school where the soul of man is sent to stud}' and 
learn its divinity and to develop its wonderful 
powers. 



XXVIII 

THE WASTE OF THOUGHT-FORCE 

Life is too short for aught but high endeavor — 
Too short for hate, but long enough for love. 

WHILE anger, if frequently indulged, is 
a destructive use of mental force and a 
waste of energy, it has been claimed that an 
occasional burst of anger is better for the system 
than a state of dull lethargy. We are assured that 
emotion and enthusiasm are necessary aids to a 
good circulation, and to the ensuing perfect action 
of the human mechanism, physical and mental; 
and that it is better to be roused into anger than 
never to be roused at all. 

But anger is a tonic which must be sparingly 
employed, or the result will prove disastrous. 
The individual who is easily and perpetually 
roused to a display of anger is wasting the precious 
substance of his mind and receiving nothing in 
return. It is as if he flung money to the four 
winds of the compass, in a mood of lawless defi- 
ance. Yet the most hopeless and exasperating 
type of mental spendthrift on earth is the whiner. 

The man or woman who is for ever complaining 



ISO THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

of the hard lot which has been dealt out by Des- 
tiny, and who has developed a mania for sym- 
pathy, is hour by hour, and day by day, and year 
by year wasting the most precious inheritance a 
human being possesses and inviting spiritual 
poverty. Two women in one town were brought 
face to face with the consciousness that upon 
them depended the maintenance of their homes 
and the future of their children. Both women 
had been unfortunate in the marriage lottery, 
and both had drawn blanks — men without moral 
sense or any realization of their responsibilities 
to keep their marriage vows and to support their 
families. 

Both women turned from the shelter of the 
home they had enjoyed for a period of years 
and entered the arena of the world's workers. 
One turned with a smiling face and the poise of 
a philosopher; the other entered the new field 
with a whining voice and ever-teary eyes. The 
one began to relate her first steps toward upward 
success and to talk of the hopeful future; the 
other wept over the dark present and recounted 
the useless tale of the better days she had previ- 
ously enjoyed. The first woman made friends and 
continually enlarged her sphere of action; the 
other drove people from her with her whining 
voice and melancholy face and went from failure 
to failure; and each failure gave her new themes 
of melancholy conversation. Always she won- 
dered why the other wom.an was so lucky and she 



THE WASTE OF THOUGHT-FORCE 151 

so unlucky. Little by little her mental energies 
and creative forces were dissipated in the most 
useless manner. 

The first woman kept the weak husband from 
going utterly to ruin and awoke in him a sense of 
his own unworthiness; the other woman widened 
the breach hopelessly and gave the outside world 
an opportunity to say, *'It is no wonder the man 
went wrong; such a woman would drive any man 
away.'' 

It was a whining woman who inspired a young 
genius, Thomas Dreler, to formulate a wonderful 
prayer. He had been in close association with 
the wife of an acquaintance, a woman who was 
always complaining that she did not ''feel well" 
and that life did not move to her liking; from 
week-end to week-end she was seeking for sym- 
pathy. When this woman had gone, Mr. Dreler, 
who is a bachelor of twenty-five, made this prayer: 

A man's prayer 

Give me, God, a vibrant flame of a woman for a mate. 
Make her, I pray Thee, a woman of merriment. Fill her 
with a master love for the strenuous. Enlarge her vision 
so that it will see all things, and make her wise with that 
wisdom which shall see naught that demands her forgive- 
ness. Give her a body compounded with strength and 
symmetry. Send surging through her a spirit elemental. 
Fill her with a love for the open air, the high hills, the 
winding streams, the storms that send snow and sleet 
across the wastes. Make her vibrate with the joy of the 
lightning-flash and the crash of the thunder. Let her ever 
be a silent worshiper of the stars. I would have her frank 



152 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

and fearless and gentle— fit to play her hand in the Game 
of Life in the manner of a master. And when in Thy 
goodness Thou hast given this v7oman unto me, let me 
ever find in her something elusive — something that shall 
ever keep me searching joyously with wonder. Give me, 
God, a woman who will demand more of me than I have 
ever dared to demand of myself, who will help me liberate 
that creative energy necessary for the realization of my 
dreams. If it be Thy will that this w^oman be not given 
to me in the flesh, give her to me as an ideal woman who 
will lead me daily to render to my neighbors the service 
most expressive of my great love for her, and may she 
never permit me to find the final goal. 



Waste of thought is the most common waste 
which exists, and there is no other extravagance 
so devastating in its results. 

For thought is the God-given power which was 
meant for man to use constructively, and to have, 
and be, and do whatever he wished. 

If you are a merchant, waste no time or breath 
in talking about the dishonesty and unworthiness 
of your rivals in business. 

If you are a physician, or a beauty specialist, 
or a dressmaker, or teacher of wisdom, the same 
advice applies to you. All the vitality you can 
draw from space keep to make your own methods 
successful. 

Each time you indulge in criticism and back- 
biting or in open denunciation of the methods 
of some competitor you are losing ground your- 
self. 

Let other artists paint, let other authors write, 



THE WASTE OF THOUGHT-FORCE 153 

other merchants sell, other actors act, and other 
singers sing. Wish them all glory, success, hap- 
piness. Lift your soul to the vastness of space 
and refuse to be petty and small and jealous and 
critical. 'Ask for all the force, all the light, all 
the wisdom that is being stored up for _^our use. 
Receive it, and go your way. 

I have known a physician to devote the greater 
part of his time while calling on patients, or while 
they were in his institution, to the disparagement 
of brother doctors whose ideas did not coincide 
with his own. 

There are metaphysicians who are similarly 
inclined, even though such a procedure is in con- 
tradiction of the laws they teach. But, while it 
is a simple matter to teach philosophy, it is very 
difficult to make it a part of our daily working 
habits. 

Every time we stop in our appeal to the forces 
within or without for strength and aid, to criticize 
a fellow-man who follows some other line of pro- 
cedure, we turn off the current the Divine Elec- 
trician has always in working order for our use. 

There is room for every sincere soul on God's 
earth. No one can crowd another. No one can 
injure another's business. You alone can injure 
or interfere with your own affairs, and the surest 
way to do it is to interfere with the affairs of an- 
other. 

Wish every man godspeed. No matter if he 
opens a place of business next door to you in 
11 



154 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

direct competition witli you, wish him godspeed. 
Say to him and say to yourself, ''There is room 
for good workers everywhere. We are Hke two 
stars in space, and one does not interfere with 
the other's Hght. We only give the world more 

light." 

It may be hard work to bring yourself into this 
state of mind, but once you arrive there you will 
be conscious of new power, new force. 

If your competitor is on a lower plane and 
opened his business merely to injure you, rest 
assured this attitude of your mind will have ten- 
fold the power to overcome his efforts that a re- 
sentful and defiant one would have. 

'Conserve your forces.'^ Nothing dissipates them 
like flaw-picking. Think about your own splendid 
possibilities and let your mind reach out for new 
ideas and nev/ developments in what you are 
doing, not back and down, seeking flaws in what 
your competitors are doing. 



XXIX 

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 

Affirm the body, beautiful and whole, 
The earth-expression of immortal soul. 

WE must submit with such good grace as we 
can to the eternal story of human ills. 

The tale of ''hard colds" and ''threatened 
with pneumonia'' and "almost bronchitis" and 
all the miserable train of attendant maladies 
is constantly rehearsed by friends, strangers, and 
casual acquaintances, and we must listen and 
show a certain amount of sympathy or be deemed 
brutal. But we can at least resolve to return 
good for evil, and not relate your own ailments 
to every passer-by. 

If we keep our minds filled with the thought 
of perfect radiant health it will do much toward 
helping us realize that blessing. 

To fill our limgs full, full of fresh air slowly, 
many times each day, and to say, "I am health 
absolute," and to picture ourselves as vigorous 
and full of vitality, is a long step toward resist- 
ance of disease. 

"As a man thinketh, so is he," and if we re- 



156 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

fuse to entertain the fear of disease and per- 
sist in drawing mind pictures of health we are well 
equipped to meet most weather emergencies. 

But if we do not possess the mental poise at all 
times to ward off sickness, at least let us refuse 
to spread thought germs of disease by continually 
talking sickness. We can stay at home and send 
for a doctor if we do not know how to get well 
without him, and we can, if we will, keep still 
about our experience afterward. Life is too 
short to waste it talking disease. 

Your life depends on your breathing, and there- 
fore it is first necessary to learn to take deep, 
full breaths instead of half filling the lungs, and 
therefore not infusing sufficient oxygen into the 
blood to keep it in good, healthy condition. Cor- 
rect breathing is absolutely necessary. The man 
who thinks rightly, who breathes thoroughly, and 
who does not eat too much has the secret of 
health pretty well in his possession. 

If he falls ill, it will be but a temporary illness. 
Many people imagine a hearty appetite a road to 
health. It is far more frequently a short cut to 
the grave. Few human beings die of starvation, 
many of gluttony, still more of indigestible food. 

There is a young woman who is taking most 
scientific care of her person in order to preserve 
her beauty. She is young, in the very morning 
of life, and nature gave her beautiful features 
and complexion and form. 

She studies the fashions and plans becoming 



HEALTH AND BEAUTY 157 

costumes, and she patronizes the ''specialists" 
who know how to beautify and preserve the skin 
and hair and nails and figure. 

She takes physical exercises to keep her body 
supple, and all this is sensible and wise. The 
body is the soul's temple and should be cared for. 

But the most important factor in feminine 
beauty this young woman has utterly neglected — 
the mind. She neither reads nor studies. 

Worse still, she harbors resentful thoughts 
toward her friends and acquaintances for the 
least offense, or what she imagines an offense. 
Unless her associates agree with her on all matters 
she assumes a haughty and cold air and sets her 
face in a frozen mold that, unconsciously to 
herself, is day by day ruining her beauty. All 
her friends see and realize the fact. The eyes 
are becoming hard, the mouth petulant, the whole 
expression disagreeable, the whole woman un- 
bearable. Added to this, she is self-indulgent 
and uses no control in the matter of appetite, 
and that fault is making more ravage upon her 
beauty than all the specialists can remedy. 

Even a plain woman who begins at eighteen to 
cultivate the mind and heart and soul can be 
beautiful at thirty. 

And at forty she will be still more beautiful, 
and will attract the admiration of all eyes, where 
the sculptured face, with cruel or cold heart and 
uncultivated mind, will pass unnoticed. 

I saw an old lady close to her seventies once 



158 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

with the most exquisite mouth — ^it was as soft as a 
child's, with sweetly molded corners and sympa- 
thetic curves to the lips, and the whole expression 
was suggestive of the magical word — Love. 

A dozen yoimg women in the room would pass 
without attracting the attention this charming 
old lady won. 

Angels of goodness and amiability in the way 
of sweet thoughts and worthy habits had chiseled 
that mouth. Every thought, every emotion, 
every impulse, leaves its mark upon the face, 
and the most beautiful features cannot make a 
beautiful woman at twenty-five or thirty if the 
mind previous to that time has been ruled by 
anger, revenge, petulance, selfishness, and indo- 
lence. 

The woman who is for ever trying to convince 
the public how young she is expresses one extreme 
of folly, and the woman who is constantly telling 
how old she is illustrates another. 

There are women who are so extremely sensitive 
upon the subject of advancing years that they 
hasten to announce each birthday from the house- 
top, lest some one should attempt to remind 
them of it. 

*'I am no longer young,'' ''I am quite an old 
woman," are phrases one hears now and then 
from the women whose faces belie their words; 
but, fortunately, this type of woman is becom- 
ing rarer, for the new philosophy is teaching the 
world that the mind, rather than the years, create 



HEALTH AND BEAUTY 159 

age and its appearance. In this day, too, we but 
rarely see the wife who looks old enough to be 
her husband's mother while yet his junior; at 
least, we do not encounter her in the large centers, 
where life is full of variety and action. In the 
country places she is still to be found — the faded, 
care-worn woman of forty, whose spruce, up-to- 
date husband a few years older might well^pass 
for her son. 

She knows how old she looks, and the knowledge 
frets and worries her and adds new lines to her 
face. 

She does not know that she is herself in fault 
for letting her mind run on thoughts of the pass- 
ing years, and in a belief that her youth and her 
charms are vanished. 

Time was when a married woman donned a 
cap and a sober air and ''settled down," even 
though she were in her ''teens.'' 

In those days husbands delighted in calling 
their wives "mother" or "the old lady," accord- 
ing to their mood, and society allowed no margin 
for youthful spirits after the wedding vows were 
taken. Yet it found excuses for the gallant hus- 
band who remained young while his wife advanced 
into premature age and unloveliness. 

The married woman to-day has every legitimate 
avenue for pleasure and distraction which is open 
to the debutante; and she is expected to adorn 
herself as becomingly as does her single sister, 
while as a rule she has a much better furnished 



i6o THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

mind and is more entertaining to both men and 
women than the average young girl. 

In this age nothing is more absurd than for a 
woman to imagine her power to please and at- 
tract her husband and hold her own socially has 
ceased because she has attained middle life. 

The woman of brain and culture who has the 
self-control and the perseverance to combat obes- 
ity, and the mental and scientific equipment to 
defy wrinkles, should feel no fear of advancing 
time — should, indeed, regard it as a generous 
friend, with added gifts to bestow. 

In every age there have been examples of ma- 
ture women who have held their sway socially 
and sentimentally. Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, As- 
pasia were all women who had seen twoscore 
years when their greatest prowess was felt. Jo- 
sephine was forty years old before she became 
empress, and her sway was supreme and her 
beauty pre-eminent at that age. 

Madame de Maintenon was advanced in years 
and not at all beautiful when she captured a king 
for a husband, and held him captive till he died. 

At an American army post one season a new 
belle appeared, so full of wit and so sympathetic 
and so entertaining, as well as so lovely in person, 
that from staid generals down to boyish recruits 
all hearts were laid at her feet. 

She charmed her own sex as readily as she did 
men, as do all really fascinating women; yet it 
was a woman, I believe, who discovered through 



HEALTH AND BEAUTY i6i 

some chance mutual acquaintance, and who did 
not delay in reporting the surprising fact, that 
the charmer was past fifty years of age. 

It is not the mere preservation of beauty which 
gives such women their power; it is sympathy, 
tact, adaptability, and a knowledge of human 
nature, and a desire to please. 

All are qualities worth cultivating. 



XXX 

SELF-CONTROL 

For this alone the Universe exists — 
That man may find himself is Destiny. 

It is not so important that things go as I think they 
should as it is that I should be master of them through 
self-control. — Unity, 

YOU can apply this in any kind of experience 
you may have. If you are working among 
people v/hose manners and habits jar upon you, 
apply this rule and watch developments. 

Once you control yourself you will be surprised 
to find how many things which annoy you will 
change or disappear. 

Just so long as you are a servant to your own 
irritable nerves and whims you will find the 
world is one succession of sharp corners against 
which you bruise yourself at every move. When 
you become master of yourself the corners will 
round into curves imperceptibly but surely. 

The same rule applies in your home. 

What attitude are you taking toward your own 
family and relatives and friends and toward hu- 
manity? 



SELF-CONTROL 163 

Are you posing as a martyr? Do you wear the 
resigned expression of a wronged creature who 
must submit to persecution, or a sullen, resentful 
one, or a belligerent one? 

Are you thinking and brooding over your 
wrongs and making yourself and others miser- 
able in consequence? 

If you are doing any one of these things you 
are a criminal — far worse than many a convict 
behind prison bars. If you are disturbing the 
peace of your household, the comfort of husband 
or children or relatives or friends by your tem- 
per, your complaints, or your sarcasm, then you 
are a murderess. It is a more unpardonable 
crime than many committed by people who are 
condemned by judge and jury, no matter how 
high your standing in church or community. No 
woman is a really good woman unless she is an 
agreeable woman to her daily associates. 

Perhaps you are a wronged, misused wife, 
and tell me your troubles have destroyed your 
nervous system and that you cannot help being 
irritable and cross and saying unpleasant things 
at times. 

I tell you in reply that the most adorable, 
agreeable, and angelic woman I ever knew was a 
wronged wife, a woman who had suffered every 
indignity and humiliation and neglect possible 
from a mean, brutal-natured man. Yet she made 
a heaven for her children and friends in her 
home. 



i64 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

She had learned this great law of becoming 
Master of Circirmstances through self-control. 

Although things about her were not to her lik- 
ing, she made all these things seem as trifles be- 
fore her calm self-conquest. She said to her- 
self, *' Though my best love and my best faith 
and my sweetest hopes have been thrown into 
the dust, I will not let myself go down. 

*'I have lost respect for the man to whom I 
gave my life's happiness, but I will not lose re- 
spect for myself; and I will show the world I can 
create happiness, even if I cannot find it where 
I hoped it would be, in my marital life.'' 

Surely this was better than becoming soured, 
aggressive, complaining, and pessimistic, and mak- 
ing her presence dreaded by all her associates. 

There was a great French writer who said, 
''If you have not what you like, like what you 
have." 

But even if you cannot like your environment, 
you can make yourself a master of it, and refuse 
absolutely to be dominated by it. You can grow 
and rise above it; and after a time, if you do this, 
the environment will change and circumstances 
will alter to your will. 

The whole philosophy of Ufe is contained in 
that little sentence from Unity. 

''It is not so important that things go as I think 
they should as it is that I should be master of them 
by self -control'' 



XXXI 

THE SPRINGS OF HAPPINESS 

What sunny roads of happiness lead out 
Beyond the realms of indolence and doubt! 



w 



HAT is happiness? 
Is happiness within the reach of the 
average person? 

Is happiness desirable? 

If happiness were possible, would not a great 
incentive to hnman endeavor be removed? 

What is the chief aim of life? 

Happiness is the state of mind which enables 
us to be grateful for the boon of life and to rejoice 
with the rising of each sun that another day has 
dawned for our use. 

Happiness is within the reach of every indi- 
vidual who is willing to develop his higher quali- 
ties and to control his lower and more selfish 
nature. Not until he realizes that this is the foun- 
dation of happiness, however, can we hope for 
this effort on the part of the average human being. 

The great majority of people imagine happiness 
means possession of whatever the human heart 
craves or the human mind desires. A very little 



i66 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

observation will prove to the most casual thinker 
how erroneous is that conception of the word. 
Some of our multimillionaires are in possession 
of whatever they desire, but it would be unwise to 
point to any one as a happy man. > 

The child with its toys on Christmas morning, 
the lover and maid in their first bliss, the yotmg 
bride and groom, the mother with her first-born, 
the girl at her first ball, all are happy in one sense 
of the word. But it is an ephemeral and feverish 
happiness oftentimes, and, besides, it walks the 
specter of fear and the ogre of change. 

The toys are broken; the lovers are tormented 
with jealousy; the bride and groom and the young 
mother fear death or disaster ; and the yotmg girl 
is succeeded by a rival belle at her second ball, 
and happiness dwells no longer beside any of these. 
The man who makes a fortune by the rise of stocks 
is happy for a day; the warrior who receives a 
decoration for bravery and the scholar who carries 
away the honors of his class are happy. 

But these are all passing conditions, not settled 
states of mind, and they cannot be called happi- 
ness absolute. 

Real happiness must rest on the foundation of 
unselfishness. It must spring from the conscious- 
ness of usefulness, and it must be one with Faith. 
It must forget its ov/n goal in helping others to 
find theirs. Only this kind of happiness is desi- 
rable. 

The happiness which means gratified ambition 



THE SPRINGS OF HAPPINESS 167 

and appetites is not a high and noble aim for any 
soul to seek. And gratified ambitions and satisfied 
appetites do not result in happiness, but in satiety 
and discontent. If such happiness were possible, 
then, indeed, a great incentive to human endeavor 
would be removed; for it is the ceaseless striving 
toward other goals than the one achieved which 
spurs men on to new effort. 

The chief aim of life is regarded by thousands of 
people as the attainment of happiness — personal 
gratifications. 

The chief and only aim of life intended by the 
great Creator is the perfecting of character, the 
bringing out of the God within. The moment a 
human being grasps this fact he is on the road to 
happiness. For whatever sorrowful experience 
comes to him he will turn it toward self-develop- 
ment and find his happiness in the knowledge that 
he is working toward self-completion. 

Only when a man knows that he can never be 
happy in doing one act or harboring one thought 
which can lower him mentally or morally, or can 
mar the life of another, is he on the right road to 
real happiness. Wealth, so eagerly and madly 
pursued by the majority of men, has little to do 
with happiness. 

Idleness is an absolute foe to happiness. 

No idle man or woman has any comprehension 
of the word. Work, regarded by many as the 
curse sent upon man for sin, is instead God's high- 
way to the hills of happiness. 



i68 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

Not drudgery, but blessed employment, which 
brings all the activities into play and gives a zest 
to recreation. 

Wealth, fame, power, success, position, beauty 
— all of these are incapable of producing happi- 
ness imless the soul is set toward the heights of 
God and the heart filled with the attributes of the 
Christ — love and sympathy. 

Happiness would be impossible were any one 
being left alone on earth; and just to the degree 
that a soul is separated from the rest of humanity 
by selfishness and lack of universal sympathy, 
so is that soul incapable of enjoying happiness 
while still pursuing it. Just in the measure we 
feel near to our kind and eager to be of use are 
we augmenting our chances for happiness on 
earth. 

Only he who finds such happiness on earth can 
expect to find it in heaven. For happiness is a 
mental state and can be fashioned by otir thoughts. 
The approach to heaven is through the pathway 
of happiness. The approach to happiness lies 
in love, trust, and service. 

Love for the universe, trust in God, and service 
to humanity. 

And this leads to the happiness which is immor- 
tal. The happiness ''within the reach of all" — 
the happiness which is "desirable," and the happi- 
ness which is ''the chief aim of life." 



XXXII 

THE ART OF BECOMING POPULAR 

Over and over and over, 

These truths I will say and sing, 
That love is mightier far than hate, 
That a man's own thought is a man's own fate, 

And that life is a goodly thing. 

TO be popular in the world of art is, according 
to the canons of the ''high-brow critic,'' to 
be a dweller outside of the inner sanctuary. 

Yet the Sermon on the Mount is popular. 

Whatever possesses all the qualities of real 
greatness must be popular, even though things 
which possess no qualities of greatness may be 
widely poptdar also. 

The large majority of people may like something 
mediocre, and only few may like something which 
contains many of the elements of greatness — 
something too fine for the masses to compre- 
hend — but that which possesses all the elements 
of greatness must reach and grip the whole race. 
For among those elements simplicity and sym- 
pathy must be counted, those opening wedges to 
all minds. 
12 



I70 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

The human being who is popular is sometimes 
accused of being all things to all men, and there 
is a cant phrase much in vogue among the un- 
popular about ''caring only for a few people and 
being cared for by only a few/' And this serves 
frequently as an easy excuse for the unpopularity 
of the dull or the disagreeable. 

To be a popular individual in any commimity 
of self-respecting and morally disposed citizens, 
and to grow in popularity Vvdth acquaintance 
and time, calls for nobility of character, purity of 
purpose, and kindness of heart. 

It calls also for tact, for discretion, for good 
judgment, for unselfishness, for generosity, for 
amiability, and the power to bring out the best 
in others. It calls for a heart big enough to re- 
joice in the achievements of others. It calls for 
the elimination of all jealousy, all tendencies to 
gossip, all impulses to be indolent or indifferent 
or self-centered. 

Therefore it would seem that an ambition to 
be popular is at the same time an ambition to 
become a worth-while individual and a practical 
Christian. 

The man who sets out to be a great discoverer 
in science or a great creator in the world of art 
may not have the time to become a popular man 
in his own social circle. But if he is decidedly 
unpopular he is sure to lack some of the large 
elements of character which are necessary to 
bring him to the stimmit of the heights he seeks. 



THE ART OF BECOMING POPULAR 171 

Unless he is liked and respected by those who 
know him best something is amiss with the 
man. 

There is a cheap and temporary popularity 
which comes from the abiHty to amuse others, 
from the propensity to be generous to the Hmit 
of extravagance, and to be ever ready with im- 
meaning flattery, but the reign of these social 
leaders and lions is always brief. 

Sincerity and tact are two qualities which 
make for lasting popularity-^sincerity in thought 
and purpose, tact in the application of that 
virtue.^ 

The tactful person knows when and how to be 
silent. 

Many sincere individuals think a brutal ex- 
pression of the most unpleasant and disagreeable 
opinions is an evidence of their sincerity. But 
the tactful man or woman knows when to speak 
and when to be still and how to change a topic 
of conversation when some one has trodden on 
delicate ground. 

The woman who desires to be popular should 
first of all learn the charm which lies in listening 
well; and she should cultivate the art of drawing 
others out, of making those with whom she is 
thrown shine to their best advantage. 

If a man talks well, lead him to converse; if 
he sings well, induce him to sing; and to bring 
forth the most attractive qualities and accom- 
plishments of her women friends is a sure way for 



172 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

any woman to take a long step forward on the 
road to popularity. 

Such a woman, possessing no marked accom- 
plishments herself, and without beauty or great 
mental gifts, stands a far better chance of becom- 
ing popular than the self-conscious Venus or 
the prodigy of brilliant attainments who only en- 
joys herself when occupying the center of the social 
stage and basking in the glare of the spot-light. 

Unselfishness, then, is the keynote to popu- 
larity, as it is the key to the highest moral worth. 
But this unselfishness must be mingled with good 
sense, with tact, with delicacy and refinement, 
in order to serve as an aid to popularity. 

Without these ingredients unselfishness and gen- 
erosity sometimes become obtrusive, officious, 
and offensive. 

The most perfect type of popular woman is 
she who can shine like the sun when sunshine is 
needed, yet who, like that orb, does not alvv^ays 
shine, but retires behind the clouds and calls at- 
tention to the brilliancy of the stars and the moon ; 
one who can be entertaining or amusing or in- 
structive, as occasion demands, but who can al- 
ways put herself in the background in order to 
exhibit the graces and charms of others, and who 
is ever ready to rejoice in another's success with- 
out any belittling clause affixed to praise; one 
who can be tolerant of the ideas and opinions 
of others while holding entirely opposite ones, 
and who knows how to hold fast to her own 



THE ART OF BECOMING POPULAR 173 

ideals while understanding how others may fail 
to do so. 

The popular woman has quick perceptions, 
and, however great her vogue, she is never blinded 
by conceit to such an extent that she fails to per- 
ceive her own faults or neglects correcting them 
once she sees them. 

That which she finds disagreeable in others 
she decides to avoid doing herself. 

And those graces and qualities which appeal 
to her in others she cultivates. 

To seek popularity for the sake of being popu- 
lar means the undermining of character. 

To seek it through a desire to be a benefit, a 
pleasure, and a comfort to humanity means the 
building of character. , j , 



V 



XXXIII 

life's gray days 

And only the eye that has looked on snows 
Can see all the beauty that lies in a rose. 

AN occasional gray mood comes to the sunniest 
. of natiires, just as a gray day comes, even 
in the tropics; and if we use this gray day 
wisely we will be all the better for it. 

When the bright sun of tropic lands is veiled 
by clouds one can see farther; and the landscape 
is more clearly discerned, because there is not the 
blinding dazzle of the sunlight. 

So when our hearts are clouded with a passing 
mist of trouble or worry we som^etimes see life 
more clearly, and look forward and about and 
beyond with a larger vision. I think it is a good 
thing now and then to grow utterly sick of our- 
selves, and to sit down and pull our minds and 
hearts and motives and actions and ambitions to 
pieces and dust them out as a watch-maker cleans 
a watch: to put them together again with care 
and resolve to begin all over and do better — and 
then to do it. 

It is never well to rest too long in regrets of the 



LIFE'S GRAY DAYS 175 

past, for that is over and gone and cannot be 
remedied. But it is well to remember the past 
enough to make it act as a guide and warning 
for the future. But moods of retrospection and 
regret and melancholy should be kept as luxuries, 
and must never become a habit. Indulged in 
rarely, they may serve as a tonic; but regularly 
followed, they become a poison. 

When you are walking and carrying heavy bur- 
dens, and you grow utterly weary and fatigued, 
it is not well to keep staggering on. It is better 
to sit down and rest a bit, even if you feel as you 
pause that you can never go on again. After a 
little while you will feel more courage and you 
will go on. ^But do not sit too long.^ 

Are you weary with trying to do your best, and 
have you about decided that you will give up 
the battle? Do you feel that nothing matters 
very much — that whether you succeed or fail is 
of small accoimt to the world? Do you begin to 
think you are a very small imit in the imiverse, 
and that the best thing for you to do is just to 
take life as it comes and to make no effort to 
attain any special goal, either intellectually, mor- 
ally, or financially? Are you sick of the eternal 
effort to be and do, and are you contemplating a 
renunciation of all ambition? 

Well, stop and think a bit. Suppose Colimibus 
had yielded to such a mood before he discovered 
America? 

What if George Washington had made such a 



176 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

decision in his early youth, or Benjamin Franklin, 
or Shakespeare, or Milton? What if Morse or 
Edison had given up the struggle to accomplish 
anything? And had Cyrus Field said he was 
weary of trying to gain his goal and so had let 
the ocean cable die a dream of imagination? 
What losers we would all be by it ! 

It is not merely you, yoxirself, who is to be 
benefited or harmed by your success or failure in 
life. You are to leave an influence on all who 
know you, no matter how humble your position 
may be. 

Throw a pebble into the sea, and watch the 
disturbance of the waters ; larger and larger grow 
the circles, and as they fade away invisible to the 
eye they are felt by the waves beyond our sight. 

It is so with each one of us. You are affecting 
every life you encounter on life's journey to somxC 
degree. You will affect lives of beings yet unborn 
— ^in what way and through what sources it is 
impossible to tell; but, nevertheless, an invisible 
influence is at work connecting you with other 
destinies as by an unseen cord. Think of this 
Vv^hen you are discouraged and disheartened and 
push ahead. 
' The foimtain of happiness lies in the spirit of 
man: its flowing out through his being depends 
"upon the condition of the heart and mind aque- 
ducts. 

If they are clogged with the mud of gloomy 
thoughts or the debris of petty aims or selfish 



LIFE'S GRAY DAYS 177 

desires, the divine fountain cannot flow and hap- 
piness cannot be experienced. Pleasurable emo- 
tions of a temporary nature can reach the mind 
from the outside, but this is not happiness. 

A new costume, a new house, new equipage, 
or a journey will produce a passing delight and 
gladness, but these feelings subside when the cos- 
tume loses its freshness, when the house and the 
equipage become old stories, and when the journey 
is over. Indeed, with the average mind, which 
depends upon *' things happening" for its enjoy- 
ment, the pleasure lies almost wholly in the antici- 
pation. The moment the longed-for event arrives 
disappointment arrives also. 

Men toil and hoard their earnings, living in 
impatience until the day they have accumulated 
enough to go forth and purchase what they believe 
will be happiness. After it is purchased they sigh 
and say there is no such thing as happiness. 
But they are mistaken. 

A woman longs for a fine house, and tires of it ; 
then she longs for hotel life, and tires of it; and 
again she seeks happiness in travel, and does not 
find it, and says there is no such thing. But 
there is. 

To obtain it we must clear the mind and heart 
of all obstructions and look into the clear Foun- 
tain of the Spirit. It does not matter what your 
religion or your belief may be — Jew, Christian, 
Pagan, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist — so you 
realize your Oneness with the Great Cause and 



178 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

know that Cause is Love; and that from Love 
you came, and in Love you live, and to Love you 
must return. 

Once this consciousness takes possession of you 
the fountain of happiness is set in action and will 
flood your being, even in times of sorrow and in 
hours of pain. 

Pleasurable events, success, material gains, or 
gratified desires will add to your means of enjoy- 
ment ; but if you are deprived of all these things, 
you will feel only passing disappointment; the 
waters of the fountain within will flow on and lave 
you with their gladness. 

Though you fall asleep in tears, you will waken 
in joy. Though you meet with a thousand dis- 
appointments and are encompassed with cares, 
yet will you feel hope rising in your heart and the 
rapture of life tingling in your veins. Solitude 
will be a delight to you, yet will you love to 
mingle with yoiir kind, knovdng all are one kin. 

'' Great love casteth out fear.'' Get your heart, 
mind, and soul full of love of the Creator, and bathe 
your whole being in that essence, and you will 
discover you have found the Kingdom of Heaven. 
In some souls (rightly generated) this love is 
born. Where a man and a woman deeply, abso- 
lutely, and absorbingly love each other, and a child 
is the result of this love, it is usually bom with a 
religious nature, which instinctively turns in rev- 
erence and worship toward the Creator of Uni- 
versal Life. 



LIFE'S GRAY DAYS 179 

Not all people are so born, unfortunately, and 
for those who are not, doubt, questioning, and 
despair often take the place of faith, reverence, 
and love. But to all such I would say, Go out 
and look up at the stars some clear night. Real- 
ize how many millions and billions of worlds 
move back beyond those which are visible to 
you. Think of the wonderful precision and 
perfection in the arrangement of the solar 
system, and then consider how impossible it would 
all be unless some stupendous intelligence con- 
ceived and planned and executed it. 

Then sit down alone in your room quietly for 
a few moments, close your eyes, and breathe a 
few deep inhalations and ask the Spirit of Love 
and Reverence to come into your being. Be 
silent — breathe and wait. Free your mind of all 
other thoughts, just as you would empty a vessel 
into which one was asked to pour clear water. 
Think of nothing but your desire for Love and 
Reverence. 

It will not come at one bidding if you have ac- 
customed yourself to doubt and despondency. 

But if you take a little time each day and make 
your mind passive, only asking for what you de- 
sire, Love and Reverence, they will he given. Once 
your mind is filled with these sentiments, all other 
things shall he added. But the strange part of it 
will be that you cease to care greatly for *'all 
other things'' after you find the *' Kingdom of 
Heaven'' which is in your own mind and heart. 



i8o THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

You will be happy anywhere and under all con- 
ditions. Yet whatever is added to your life you 
will enjoy with a new kind of enjoyment. ' ' Luck ' ' 
will seem to come to you in many ways. You 
will cease to worry and fret over trivial or ma- 
terial matters. 

You will grow strong and vital, and your tastes 
will be simple. 'You will not know what loneli- 
ness is, and your ambition will be to make the 
most of your own qualities rather than to win 
the world's acclaim.^' Yet, should that come to 
you, you will use it to the world's advantage. 

Your only "fear" will be the fear of not living 
utterly true to the light within you — which is the 
light from the Source. 



XXXIV 

THE REVIVAL OF DANCING 

When love for his Maker awoke in man 
The dance began. 

DANCING is an expreSvSion of joy in life. As 
far back as history reaches we find danc- 
ing associated with religious rites. Dancing com- 
prises all the other arts. 'A beautiful dancer ex- 
presses poetry, music, sculpture, painting, all in 
the dancci 

Besides being the most beautiful of all arts, it 
is the most healthful of all exercises when enjoyed 
under right conditions. Besides being the most 
healthful, it is the most moral of exercises. 

Young people who are given training in dancing 
and allowed to dance frequently in clean, whole- 
some environments and under wise chaperons 
utilize surplus vitality, v/hich, when suppressed 
by rigid rules or bigoted ideas, ofttimes results 
in mischief and disaster. 

Take the old-fashioned religious communities 
where dancing is regarded as a sin, and there are 
always to be found numerous cases of hysteria 
among the young girls and various nervous mala- 



i82 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

dies among the youths. No proper outlet for their 
superabundant young vital forces has been pro- 
vided, no escape-valve. 

Little children dance before they have ever seen 
dancing; httle kittens and little puppies and all 
small animals dance with the joy of existence. 

The waves of the sea, the leaves of the trees, 
the grasses of the meadow — all dance. The stm- 
beams dance; and Hght itself is ever in motion. 

The man and woman who have never learned 
the joy to be experienced in dancing have missed 
a great happiness. A.nd they have missed a means 
of physical grace. 

The present renaissance of the art of dancing 
is remarkable. For a decade, at least, before the 
tidal wave rose, young men fled from ballrooms 
and left girls to find partners among themselves. 
The woman who had passed thirty apologized if 
she was seen dancing; and married people were 
afraid to express a love for the diversion lest they 
be ridiculed. A beautiful and healthful and enjoy- 
able art seemed on the decline. 

Then suddenly a change, an awakening of 
dull minds, a limbering of stiff joints, new life in 
bored faces, new interest in the oldest of all arts. 
The dance was reborn. And youth was reborn in 
the hearts and bodies and minds of men and 
women of all ages. 

Grotesque, abnormal, unbeautiful, and even vi- 
cious were the early contortions of this reborn 
art. It seemed like somxC strange creature which 



THE REVIVAL OF DANCING 183 

had been shut in the dark so long that it became 
half insane when let forth once more into the full 
light of day. So cramped had it been with its 
incarceration that it flung itself about in curious 
contortions to make certain of its freedom. 

But those contortions are now becoming grace- 
ful movements ; and the insane expressions of lib- 
erty are resolving themselves once more into 
the primal meaning of the dance — the joy of life. 
Nothing more absurd, nothing more unreasonable, 
could be than the ban placed by various individu- 
als on dances bearing certain names. One sees 
flaming head-lines announcing that somebody in 
power, socially or otherwise, has sent forth an 
edict against the tango or some other new dance. 

As reasonable would it be to decry walking 
because it is possible to walk indecently. As 
reasonable would it be to brand music as an agent 
of the devil because music has been put to evil 
purposes by the vicious minded. There were cer- 
tain curious dances which sprang forth like fungus 
growths and lasted for a night and a day, bearing 
unwholesome names. 

The *' turkey -trots'' deserved to be tabooed; 
more particularly because of the suggestion of 
the barnyard and the most ungraceful of fowls, 
than for its own inherent wickedness. It was 
vulgar rather than wicked. Dancing is an art, 
and should suggest only the artistic and the beau- 
tiful. It belongs with perfumes, with flowers, with 
statuary and music, with gladness and rejoicing. 



i84 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

Long ago, in Eastern lands, devout and reverent 
souls danced songs to the rising sun; and to-day 
in those lands there are dancers in the temples 
who devote their lives to sacred rites and who 
live purely and sweetly that they may be worthy 
in the eyes of their Creator to perform the religious 
dances. There are moral-minded men and women 
who have associated every evil meaning with the 
word ''tango." Yet the tango is graceful, artis- 
tic, and beautiful as the minuet when properly 
danced. 

It is as innocent of anything injurious to the 
morals of the young as skipping the rope. 

Instead of selecting some one or two new dances 
to decry, our well-meaning moralists should de- 
cry indecent attitudes or suggestive movements 
in all dancing. The same moralists make no pro- 
tests against the waltz and two-step. Yet both 
of those dances can be made quite as objection- 
able as any of the most modern inventions if the 
participants so wish. 

When the waltz was first introduced in the 
ballroom it created as great excitement and as 
violent protests as the modern dances are creating. 
Lord Byron, who was debarred from the pleasure 
by lameness, exhausted his vocabulary of invec- 
tive against the immoral waltz. 

Let us be sensible and reasonable. The dance 
is reborn, and it must live its life. It must do 
its work. It must be met as a factor in social 
life. Instead of attempting to crush it or abolish 



THE REVIVAL OF DANCING 185 

it, instead of saying to otir young people, ''You 
can dance and two-step, but you must not learn 
any of the new dances; they are indecent," let 
us say : ''Learn all the new dances, but be modest, 
decent, graceful, and well-behaved on the dancing- 
floor. 

"Dance only with your friends and in the en- 
vironment which is respectable and safe from 
intrusion of the undesirable. Show all observers 
how beautiful a thing dancing may be." 

And to our older people let us offer hearty con- 
gratulations that the^^ no longer need apologize 
or explain when owning to a love of the art of all 
arts. For to-day the man or woman who does 
not dance is the exception. He or she needs to 
explain why. Not the dancer. A healthier world, 
a happier world, and a more normal world will 
result from the welcoming of this art than from 
its suppression. And the world at large is to be 
congratulated that a recreation has come into 
vogue which brings the sexes together. 

For many years there has been a tendency, 
especially in America, toward separate pleasures 
for men and women. Men herded in clubs ; women 
in clubs of their own manless drawing-rooms, 
where the eternal and brain-dwarfing and body- 
stiffening bridge game was pursued. Cards are 
excellent friends to the htmian race when indulged 
in occasionally. But nothing is more arresting 
to mental development, nothing is more un- 

healthful and unsocial than a card-mania such 
13 



i86 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

as the bridge-fobia which has given place now to 
the dance-ritis. 

Women who spent entire days over the bridge- 
table, beginning in the forenoon and ending at 
midnight, now meet their men friends at musical 
dances in the afternoon or balls in the evening. 
Men who were always in their clubs when not in 
their offices drop in at musical teas and enjoy 
dancing at their own homes or the homes of their 
friends in the evening. On with the dance. It 
will make the world more wholesome. 



XXXV 

PRACTICAL MENTAL PRESCRIPTION 

I am success. Though hungry, cold, ill-clad, 
I wander for a while; I smile and say, 

**It is but for a time — I shall be glad 
To-morrow, for good fortune comes my way. 

God is my Father; He has wealth untold, 

His wealth is mine, health, happiness, and gold." 

On retiring at night, just before going off to sleepy say^ 
either mentally or orally as you choose: 

**/ am health, strength, peace, happiness, and prosperity, 
and everything that goes to make for good, 

*^Pure, good, rich blood is flowing through fny body,"remoV' 
ing all obstructions and bringing peace, health, and harmony, 

"/ am well and strong and vital, 

"/ am beautiful, pur e^ and good. 

"/ am on the road to eternal youth, 

"/ am opulent, happy, and free J* 

Last, but not least: 

"/ will arise with unusual energy and radiance and power 
of accomplishment in the morning.^* 

^^All I ask is that you do not try to dictate the way these 
things shall or may come, and I will guarantee them to cure 
anything from poverty to rheumatism,^ ^ — Dr. Carmany. 

LET every reader take with seriousness these 
/ emphatic statements of Dr. Carmany and 
put them to the test. 



i88 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

There is nothing the matter with the world, 
with life, with destiny. Everything we desire 
or want or need waits for our claiming. But the 
majority of God's children are waiting for some- 
body besides themselves to bring them these things. 
Not more than one himian being in one thousand 
looks to himself and the Power back of himself 
for success, health, and happiness. The other nine 
hundred and ninety-nine look to luck, to chance, 
to influence, to favors of friends and acquaint- 
ances, to doctors, to patent medicines, to some 
hoped-for miracle, and all the time a mine of 
wealth and reservoir of power within themselves 
lies unexplored and imused. 

If you have a garden, and a reservoir of water 
which is fed from an inexhaustible mountain 
stream, and you spend hours in prayer to God 
for rain to water your garden, do not feel that God 
has been unkind if in a season of drought your 
plants wither and die. It is your own fatilt that 
you did not use the water in the reservoir. 

Prayer is a great force; it puts our highest 
mental and moral powers in touch with the whole 
magnificent universe, and with the clouds of wit- 
nesses and the hosts of ministering angels who ^ 
are waiting to do the Father's bidding on earth; 
and the Father's bidding is eternal usefulness to 
humanity. 

These Invisible Helpers are ever ready to help 
us help ourselves. But they would not answer our 
prayers for rain to save our gardens if we did not 



PRACTICAL MENTAL PRESCRIPTION 189 

use the water in the reservoir which had been 
suppHed to us. An inexhaustible reservoir Hes 
in every soul born upon earth. The one thing for 
you to do is to pipe your mental faculties to this 
reservoir. 

Then follow the instructions which are quoted 
above. Every time you make those assertions 
you are turning on a faucet. It is of little use, in 
a dry, arid season, to turn the water on your gar- 
den once a week. It must be done every day. If 
you watered your plants once, and then after a 
month complained how badly they looked despite 
your having watered them, that would be as rea- 
sonable as the attempts of many people to put 
metaphysical thought into practice. Every trade, 
profession, business,, and art is brought to perfec- 
tion by persistent and unremitting efforts. 

The great philosophy of thought power can only 
be proven and demonstrated by the same unre- 
mitting, untiring methods. The little formula 
given by Dr. Carmany holds'the whole philosophy 
in a concise form. It is a spiritual homeopathic 
tablet. Take one every night on retiring, and after 
three months you will be astonished at results. 

Pray often; lift your heart on high; but work 
first, last, and always. Do not be a spiritual loafer 
and expect angels to perform your work with no 
effort on your part. Do not talk about your 
methods; and do not ask any one for advice or 
counsel. Look only to your own soul for light. 



XXXVI 

THE NEED OF THE WORLD 

The earth is God's expression, 

And love is all it needs; 
And this is faith's confession 

Of what it lacks in creeds. 

THERE is only one need in the world, the need 
to love our neighbor as otirselves; to do 
exactly as we wotild be done by; to understand 
that the' human race is one body, and that when 
we do anything which harms or hurts one indi- 
vidual we harm all individuals, ourselves included; 
just as we harm the body when we injure any 
member — hand, foot, eye, or ear. When we stop 
and think about the world, the whole process 
of life becomes very pitiful. Each being born 
upon the earth is striving for happiness from 
the cradle to the grave, in his own way. 

According to his light, he is doing the best he 
can. He does not know it, but the only satisfying 
things which he can get out of life are peace 
of mind, self-respect, and the love of his fellow- 
men. 

Nothing he can obtain without these things, 



THE NEED OF THE WQ.RLD 191 

nothing he can achieve or become, is- of any real 
value. No man can be happy without these 
three blessings. Any man can be happy with 
them, even though he is saddened by the sor- 
row he sees about him, the sorrow which results 
from striving after the needless things of earth, 
after the possessions of others. 

There would be no war, no industrial problems, 
no prisons, no poor-houses, no white slaves, no 
sex sins if men and women all set forth early in 
life on that threefold quest — for peace of mind, 
for self-respect, for the love of their fellow-men. 

That is all any soul is seeking; that is all any 
soul desires, because that is all there is in life 
worth living for. Yet is there war and strife, 
hatred and sin, sorrow and anguish, misery and 
poverty because all men have not yet learned 
that there is only one need in the world. 

The need of the world is love. And love is 
God. Once we love humanity with the love 
that substitutes pity for censure, we have found 
God. 

The query is put, *'How can we love our 
neighbor as ourself if our neighbor is all that is 
unlovable, aggressive, disagreeable, immoral, of- 
fensive?" This is a conundrtmi which has vexed 
many a mind many a time. To encounter people 
whom it is impossible to love in any degree is a 
positive pain, since in loving and admiring God's 
handiwork is the greatest of life's joys. 

Fortunately, most people possess some lovable 



192 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

quality — or at least some admirable trait. The 
m^ost we can do in our early efforts to live up 
to the divine injunction is to feel pity or compas- 
sion and sympathy for the utterly disagreeable 
and unlovable beings whom we encounter along 
life's pathway, instead of allowing dislike and 
hatred to dominate our minds. If we pause to 
consider the subject dispassionately we will realize 
that no sane human being wishes to be disagree- 
able and unlovable. It is a misfortune brought 
on by perverted conditions or wrong bringing up 
and accented by habit. Once we realize this 
truth we will be sorry for the person we have been 
inclined to abhor. And pity, we know, is akin to 
love. The next step in our own self-development 
is to make an effort to illustrate the benefit and 
happiness of being agreeable toward our disagree- 
able neighbor. 

This is more easily recommended in print than 
achieved in conduct. When your "neighbor" 
entertains you by telling you all the unpleasant 
gossip or malicious remarks she has heard about 
you it is difficult to bring yourself into a state 
of mind to heap coals of fire upon her head by 
paying her compliments. Yet if you can con- 
scientiously tell her a pleasant thing about herself 
it is liable to work more of a reformation than 
any angry sarcasm on your part would do. Just 
so the ''soft answer turneth away wrath'' and 
brings shame to the uncontrolled mind. To show 
generosity toward the miserly, gentleness toward 



THE NEED OF THE WORLD 193 

the violent, charity toward the uncharitable, 
and unselfishness toward the selfish is an active 
method of trying to ''love our neighbor as our- 
self." 

It is not an easy task. It is much easier to 
adopt a religion of creeds and forms, to make long 
prayers in church, to give large sums to charity, 
to be solemn on Sunday, and from Monday to 
Saturday to indulge every impulse toward criti- 
cism, backbiting, personal grudges, and dislikes; 
then to repeat, ''I believe my sins are redeemed" 
on the death -bed, and die anticipating a life 
of glory. This is a popular and pleasant re- 
ligion. 

But it is not the religion of the Golden Rule, 
nor of the command to ''love God with all your 
heart and your neighbor as yoiirself." 

The former is the religion of our present forms 
of civilization; the religion of "competition" and 
"hustling" business methods. The latter is the 
religion of brotherhood and altruism. 

One requires a few hours in the week, the other 
the continuous effort of a lifetime and a constant 
watchfulness of self. No great height, geograph- 
ical, mental, or spiritual, is attained by one sus- 
tained attempt. We must climb, fall, and try 
again and again. The highest possible altitude 
is that reached by the soul who can truly say, 
"I love my neighbor, all my neighbors, as my- 
self." 

Though we cannot yet say it (and who can?), 



194 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

we may at least strive to treat our neighbors as 
we would be treated and to search for the admi- 
rable quality in each, forgetting as much as pos- 
sible the disagreeable traits, even as we would 
have our own forgotten. 



XXXVII 

THE LIFE HEREAFTER 

Though the ranks of friends are thinning, 
Still the end is but beginning 

Of a larger, fuller day; 
And the joy of life is spilling, 
From my spirit, as all willing 

I go speeding on my way. 

A MAN who says he is a great student of all 
the religions urges me to be ^'sensible" and 
discontinue writing or talking about *'God'' or 
"Heaven" or "Future Ute^ 

He says these things are superstitions, which 
people of intellect must abandon or resign all 
claim to intellectuality. 

This man is, of course, an egotist of the rankest 
order. He is so blinded by his self-conceit that 
he cannot see Truth. He is like an individual 
who sits holding his own photograph close to his 
eyes and says, "There is no universe, no sun or 
skies; there is only this card on which I see my 
face." The perfectly balanced human being forms 
a complete triangle. Physically strong, mentally 
strong, spiritually strong: the three natures are 
in perfect harmony. 



196 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

We find few such beings, and consequently the 
world is filled with those who are in some respects 
dwarfed or deformed. There is the robust athlete, 
whose prowess lies in the physical realm. He 
has not developed his brain or his spirit. There 
is the hysterical spiritual being, who thinks only 
of the world beyond and neglects his mind and 
his body. There is the intellectual giant who 
has a stunted body and no spiritualit}^ or who 
has two sides of the triangle developed, body and 
mind, and only a blank space where the spiritual 
line should be. 

No one of these individuals is living the life 
God wants man to live. Each one must be sent 
back to earth in many incarnations until he learns 
to make the perfect triangle of himself, and then, 
being complete, he can pass on to other work in 
other mansions in other realms. 

This man may be a strong man physically and 
mentally, but he is dwarfed and stunted spiritu- 
ally; and because he is so he thinks there is no 
spiritual truth in the universe, as the man born 
blind might think there was no light of sun or 
moon or star. 

Fortunately, there are hundreds of brilliant 
minds ready to give their testimony to the con- 
tradiction of this man's statement — viz., that 
earth and human life are accidents, that chance 
rules all things, and that there is no life beyond 
this life and no realm beyond earth. 

One of the greatest men who ever lived, a 



THE LIFE HEREAFTER 197 

great scientist, a great hiimanitarian, a great 
scholar, was Swedenborg. And this man gave 
up position and power and place among the 
ambitious people of earth to devote his mature 
years to telling the world the marvelous facts 
he had learned about Realms within Realms and 
Life beyond Life. 

I When he was dying at the advanced age of 
eighty-three he was offered all the solaces of 
orthodox religion if he would say that he had not 
heard these voices or seen these visions. ''But 
I did see and did hear,'' he replied. And those 
were almost his last words. 

Swedenborg's opinions on politics or science 
left no marked impression on the world; very 
few people even know that he was renowned in 
those ways. But Swedenborg's religious philoso- 
phy is the comfort and the strength of thousands 
of intellectual and useful human beings. 

There is an old Hindu saying which reads thus : 

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, 
he is a fool; shun him. 

He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, he is 
simple; teach him. 

He who knows, and knows not that he knows, he is 
asleep; wake him. 

He who knows, and knows that he knows, he is wise; 
follow him. 

Swedenborg was the latter. He was the per- 
fect triangle. Great in all ways. There are thou- 



198 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

sands of other hitman beings Hving, and thousands 
who have lived, strong of intellect, clear of mind, 
who have given to the world their testimony of 
absolute knowledge of the existence of invisible 
worlds about us, and invisible helpers near us, 
just as travelers on our earth report different 
conditions and different scenes in northern and 
southern and arctic and equatorial locations. 
So the various seers observe various conditions 
in the spiritual worlds. There is just as much 
variety in these realms as in our own, and each 
seer sees according to his own powers of sight 
and according to his own mental and spiritual 
development. 

The architect on earth who is absorbed wholly 
in buildings takes a walk with an artist w^ho cares 
only for nature, and one returns unable to tell 
anything about the plants, trees, flowers, or 
scenery, but everything about the style of houses 
he has seen; while the artist has not even no- 
ticed a house, but is filled with facts concern- 
ing the landscape, the streams, the trees, the 
verdure. 

Precisely so with the man who has the open 
eye in spiritual realms. I know a quiet, indus- 
trious business man, respected by his fellows, loved 
by his associates, who seeks neither glory nor 
riches and who is ever ready to serve his friends 
or his enemies with good deeds. - This man has 
the open eye, and he is privileged in being able 
to see the invisible realms and the invisible help- 



THE LIFE HEREAFTER 199 

ers who move about among us. Naturally pos- 
sessed of the clear-seeing eye, he has developed 
the power of the ''initiate'' by high thinking 
and living and preparation. There are a few such 
on earth, and to meet and talk with them is to 
gain a great spiritual uplift. 

Without a faith in other states of existence, this 
life at its brightest and best would be insupport- 
able to a finely organized and loving soul. The 
sudden calamities which befall dear ones, the sor- 
rows and tragedies which come into every life, 
would make this brief stay on earth a ghastly jest 
were it not that we know it as only one room in 
our Father's mansion, and that we are to enter 
other rooms, dressed in other bodies, after we 
have passed from this. 

Other realms, other lives await us. Earth is 
but one of many spheres through which we pass. 
We shall meet and recognize those who were our 
spiritual kin in these other realms. Vital, deep, 
beautiful affection can never die. Only ephem- 
eral loves die with death. 

Ambition for worldly honors, enjoyment of 
wholly physical pleasures, and all that is based on 
selfishness and avarice eventually die with the 
body. They continue for a time after death be- 
cause they have fettered the spirit and prevented 
it from progressing at once. They make the spirit 
earth-bound for a season, but after a time the spirit 
gains its knowledge of higher ideals of happiness 
and goes on to the various heavens, and from 



200 THE ART OF BEING ALIVE 

those higher heavens it is allowed to come at 
times to earth to sustain and uplift and help those 
who remain. 
There is no death. There are no dead. 



THE END 



